Is Google losing its grip on search? Why users are turning to TikTok and AI for recommendations.

For the past quarter of a century, there has been one certainty on the internet: when people are looking for information, they turn to Google. But with GenZ increasingly opting for “social search” and new AI-powered search products coming on stream, could that be about to change?

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When you arrive in a new city and are looking for a place to eat, where would you look for restaurant recommendations? For internet users of a certain age, the answer is obvious — just Google it! A quick query like “Italian food near me” will turn up some Google Places results alongside user ratings as well as reviews from aggregators like TripAdvisor. Couldn’t be more obvious, right?

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But for a new generation of consumers who have grown up with an internet where large social platforms are king, search behavior is very different. As strange as it may seem to their parents, GenZ is more likely to search for lunch recommendations on TikTok, and then swipe through short-form videos to narrow down the list of eateries in their vicinity. For a demographic that highly values authenticity and is far more used to consuming video than text in everyday life, TikTok searches feel more efficient and less biased than the SEO-heavy content served up by Google’s search algorithm.

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A study of US GenZ consumers by Bernstein Research found that 45% were more likely to conduct “social searches” on platforms like TikTok or Instagram rather than searching with Google, while data from GWI Core revealed that 52% use social media as the primary search engine for brands, products and services. The trend has not gone unnoticed by Google. A senior vice president of the search giant, Prabhakar Raghavan, revealed the findings of internal research at a conference in 2022 which showed that 40% of young people favor TikTok or Instagram over Google for lunch recommendations.

Byte-Sized Branding: TikTok introduces search ad feature

TikTok looks eager to take the bull by the horns and capitalize on this change in user behavior. Earlier in October, it gave advertisers access to a new type of campaign called “search ad” that is available through the TikTok Ads Manager. This enables advertisers to directly target users on the TikTok search results page, enabling them to “manage budgets, target specific keywords and upload creative assets” for each campaign. Sound familiar, Google?

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Brands are responding too by building out their TikTok presences. Companies like Ryanair go for a sassy, humorous approach, making light of passengers who try to sneak on extra luggage, or influencers delaying take-off by taking selfies. But even traditional brands based on trust like banks, insurance, and healthcare companies are trying to get in on the act. For example, the UK-based Barclays bank shares budgeting tips for saving money in everyday life, and has attracted over two million views for some of its most popular posts, whereas Mayo Clinic shares short one-minute videos detailing various health conditions.

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Sample TikTok search ad campaign. Source: TikTok

From queries to conversations: Can AI search steal Google’s thunder? 

In addition to the rise of social search, Google’s search dominance is being threatened on another front: AI. This July, a nightmare scenario of Google executives came true: ChatGPT soft launched SearchGPT, a direct competitor to Google’s core search business. While it is still in the testing phase, it promises to offer users timely responses to queries through a conversational interface. 

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Rather than needing to leaf through pages of search results, users will be presented with a condensed summary and given the opportunity to ask follow-up questions. For example, a user might ask for recommendations for a place nearby that serves traditional Italian lasagne. They could then ask whether it also serves vegan options. You can already get a glimpse of this AI search future on Perplexity, an AI platform that describes itself as an “answer engine”, but which looks quite similar to a traditional search engine. 

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Google has tried to counter the threat from these platforms by releasing AI overviews, a feature that creates automated AI summaries of search results for certain queries. The feature got off to a very rocky start, with the internet laughing at Google instructing users to do things like eat rocks or put glue in pizza. A recent report by trade publication Search Engine Land showed that Google has drastically scaled back the product in response, only showing AI overviews for 7% of queries.

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Source: Perplexity

AI challenges: monetization and legal hurdles

While many analysts think AI could pose a challenge to Google in the long run, it is important to remember that it is still an emerging sector. While OpenAI in particular is very well funded, both it and Perplexity remain loss making entities and the path to monetization and profit is uncertain. Perplexity has announced a plan to start selling ads on the platform whereby advertisers will be able to pay to influence what follow-up questions are suggested to users. For example, if a user searches for Lionel Messi, Adidas might pay for a follow up question drawing attention to a branded promotion. Both Perplexity and ChatGPT also offer paid pro versions with a greater feature set.   

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It is also worth remembering that most generative AI products are currently operating in a bit of a legal gray zone. After it was exposed that large language models (LLMs) were originally trained on a huge trove of pirated articles and books, a number of lawsuits followed, with famous authors, and publishers like the New York Times taking cases. Litigation is ongoing, but some legal experts warn that if the AI companies lose big, it could amount to an “existential crisis”. To partially offset these concerns and improve their reputation in the publishing industry, Perplexity, OpenAI and Google have all separately negotiated licensing agreements with certain websites like Time, Fortune, The Verge, and The Atlantic. 

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The social media site Reddit even made the unusual decision to revoke access rights to other search engines like Bing after signing an AI deal with Google. This raises the possibility that exclusive deals could usher in a future where some sites will only be listed on one search engine, which would result in a fragmented user experience.

Swipe vs. Type: Adapting to the future of search

If TikTok and AI represent the future of search, they offer two highly contrasting visions of it. While TikTok involves entering a query before swiping through vertical videos and reading comments, AI search is a largely text-based, interactive experience. It remains to be seen whether input methods like voice or even augmented reality will be able to displace the keyboard for some of these interactions. Will we ever be able to get over the social awkwardness of saying “Hey Meta — show me cafes nearby” out loud on a crowded bus? Are we prepared to go around everywhere wearing smart glasses to avoid the hassle of taking our phones out of our pocket? While it seems unlikely, judging by the number of people who make phone calls using earbuds on crowded streets and public transport, it might just need to reach a critical mass of users before becoming socially acceptable.

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Meanwhile, for marketers and advertisers, the rules of the game are in flux. For the moment, Google still has a large lead in terms of market share and sites that appear in the top 10 results overlap with AI Overviews 99% of the time. So traditional SEO and page ranking still matter. However, advertisers will likely need to broaden their channel mix over the next few years, investing more in social search platforms like TikTok. In the longer term as AI search gains wider adoption, brands may need to rethink their content strategies, finding ways to not only optimize for certain keywords, but to cover the entire conversation so that they will appear more often in AI search results. 

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As the landscape of search continues to evolve, it’s clear that both social media platforms and AI technologies are reshaping how we find information online. While Google remains a dominant force, it looks like we are the crest of a new search paradigm. This creates space for new search challengers for the first time in decades.

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Photo by visuals on Unsplash