Searching on social media is nothing new. Since the early days of Facebook and MySpace (RIP), social platforms have offered search functionality to help us find accounts and information that interest us.
Those basic search tools were no threat to dedicated search engines – how could they be? But as social search becomes increasingly sophisticated, it’s starting to overtake Google, especially among younger consumers who’ve never known a world without social media.
In this article, we’ll discuss the growth of social search, then deep-dive into how it works across four key platforms:
- TikTok
- YouTube
Let’s get into it…
How Younger Consumers Favor Social Search Over Google
Social search is a trend that’s being primarily driven by younger, social-native users.
Indeed, a study from Forbes Advisor and Talker Research discovered that while 24% of all Americans primarily use social media to search online, this figure jumps to 35% among Millennials and 46% for Zoomers.
Meanwhile, a survey from influencer marketing platform GRIN found that just 18.8% of 18 to 27-year-olds most often use Google to discover new products, compared to 30.4% who mostly use Instagram and 23.2% who favor TikTok.
To be clear, GRIN’s study showed that Google isn’t going away any time soon – it’s still the #1 platform for product searches among:
- 45% of Millennials
- 1% of Gen Xers
- 9% of Baby Boomers
So we’re not telling you to immediately shift 100% of your SEO budget into social. But if you’re serious about reaching younger audiences and future-proofing your brand’s online presence, you should definitely start adopting social search best practices.
How Social Search Looks on Different Platforms
Just as SEO varies across search engines like Bing and Google, social search is different on Instagram than on TikTok or YouTube. In this section, we’ve detailed how social search works on four key platforms and spelled out how to optimize for each…
Social Search on Instagram
How Does It Work?
Instagram has a bunch of search-related features.
Most obvious is the Instagram search bar, where users can type in keywords to bring up related accounts, posts, Reels, tags, audio, and even places:
Then there are hashtags, which tell Instagram what a post is about, thereby helping the content show up in relevant searches. For instance, in this Reel, HelloFresh uses a branded hashtag alongside the popular tag #ASMR, which had 24.3+ million posts at time of writing:
View this post on Instagram
Hashtags are still important – but while they used to be the main driver of social search results, they now work best alongside other keyword signals, including:
- Captions
- Usernames
- Profile names
- Image alt text
- Account bios
For example, mattress brand Avocado Green often posts about the sustainability of its products, its use of organic materials, and commitment to sustainability…
View this post on Instagram
…which helps its content show up in Instagram searches like “best mattress natural materials”:
It’s also briefly worth mentioning the Explore tab. While not a traditional search tool, it shares algorithmic content suggestions personalized to an individual user’s past behavior and engagement – so if you watch a bunch of videos about kittens, you’ll likely see lots more in future (poor you!).
What to Do
✅ Optimize your Instagram bio by adding relevant keywords to the name field and bio statement. And don’t forget to add a business category for searchability.
✅ Add keywords in post and Reel captions to help your content show up in Instagram search results.
✅ Combine branded and non-branded hashtags to grow your brand while also tapping into trends and broader content themes. For help tracking down relevant hashtags, use a tool like Check My Hashtag or BrandMentions.
✅ Use optimized alt text in image posts to describe what’s in your images, boost accessibility, and make your posts more search-friendly.
✅ Create engaging content. Sure, this is easier said than done, but Insta prioritizes content with lots of saves, shares, views, and comments. For inspiration, check out our article: 10 Examples of How to Help Less-Than-Engaging Topics Perform Well on Social Media.
🤓 Further reading: Top 41 Brands Killing It on Instagram
Social Search on TikTok
How Does It Work?
Search is a massive deal on TikTok, with the platform’s own research revealing that 57% of TikTok users take advantage of its search functionality – including 23% who do so within 30 seconds of opening the app.
In terms of search functionality, it’s all about the TikTok search bar, which is pretty similar to Instagram’s version, helping users find relevant videos, users, places, hashtags, sounds, and more.
However, there are a couple key differences. For starters, TikTok’s search results page also includes a Shop tab that displays products matching the user’s search (where relevant; Shop results don’t show up for all queries).
As well as this, TikTok allows brands to create search ad campaigns.
These work more or less like Google Shopping ads, except that they appear alongside other TikTok content rather than in a big feed full of advertised products. These ads only show up when a user’s search includes a relevant keyword:
As such, these ads give advertisers the ability to reach users when they’re actively searching for relevant information and/or products, making them a potentially valuable tool for driving awareness and conversions.
What to Do
✅ Optimize your TikTok profile page by adding relevant keywords to your username and bio, as well as listing your location (if relevant).
✅ Add relevant keywords and hashtags to post captions to make your content more visible.
✅ List your products on TikTok Shop and make them searchable by including a clear title, relevant keywords, and accurate attributes.
✅ Get keyword inspiration from the Discover page, which shows you TikTok’s trending topics – look out for hashtags and sounds to use in your own content.
🤓 Further reading: TikTok for Business: Top 10 Brands Smashing it on TikTok
Social Search on YouTube
How Does It Work?
YouTube is arguably the closest thing in this article to a “traditional” search engine, which is no surprise seeing as it’s owned by Google. As the second most-visited website in the world, YouTube is simply way too big to overlook when it comes to social search.
Once again, search on YouTube is centered around the YouTube search bar, which steers users toward videos and YouTube Shorts that align with their queries.
Like on TikTok, advertisers can pay for their content to appear in relevant searches, enabling them to leapfrog to the top of the results page (provided they’ve got the ad budget):
The YouTube search bar also supports hashtag searches, giving you another opportunity to get your videos in front of the right audience:
Alternatively, users can simply click a hashtag in a video description or YouTube Shorts caption to access all other content that includes the same hashtag:
The above image highlights another interesting piece of YouTube search functionality – in-video search prompts within YouTube Shorts:
As you can guess, clicking or tapping that search box takes you to a YouTube results page for the relevant query, including both Shorts and long-form videos. This functionality is available on Android, iOS, and web – but, as far as we can tell, it currently only appears in a relatively small percentage of Shorts.
What to Do
✅ Optimize your video files by adding a target keyword to the file name.
✅ Add keywords to video titles and descriptions to boost your chances of showing up in relevant searches.
✅ Include hashtags in video descriptions and Shorts captions to increase reach.
✅ Upload engaging video thumbnails to boost your click-through rate, an important engagement metric believed to positively impact search performance.
✅ Use an SRT file to add subtitles and closed captions to videos, helping the YouTube algorithm understand what your content is about.
🤓 Further reading: 10 YouTube Shorts Examples to Inspire You
Social Search on Reddit
How Does It Work?
Did you know Reddit isn’t just for arguing with people?
It’s also a massive source of recommendations, with Reddit’s own research revealing that 94% of users have engaged with recommendation content in the last year. What’s more, 78% of Redditors use the platform for recommendations more than once per month – that’s far higher than other popular recommendation sources, including Amazon, Google, and influencers.
Currently, there are two main ways to find information within Reddit itself. You can either use the search bar to find relevant posts, communities, comments, media, and people…
…or find instant answers via the platform’s built-in AI, which works similarly to Google’s AI Overview:
Reddit’s core search functionality and AI answer tool draw information from the same place – the billions of words of content that users have posted on Reddit down the years. They just offer different ways to access that information.
Also, while not directly relevant to social search, it’s worth pointing out that Reddit dominates (certain) search results pages on Google. Indeed, one study found that Reddit shows up 97.5% of the time in product review queries on Google. So even if you’re only interested in “traditional” SEO, you should still be keeping a close eye on Reddit.
What to Do
✅ Find relevant subreddits to post in using Reddit’s search functionality and/or by browsing the list of all subreddits.
✅ Stick to the 90/10 approach when posting, with roughly 90% of your posts providing genuine, non-promotional value and 10% focusing on your brand and/or product.
✅ Only share promotional content where permitted, as promotion is barred on some subreddits. You risk getting your account blocked if you break the rules.
✅ Optimize your user profile by adding relevant keywords to your description. Also, consider naming your profile after a real person rather than a faceless brand for a more human feel (e.g. u/PhilSocialMediaStrategiesSummit).
✅ Create a subreddit brand community for customers to discuss your brand; the subreddit and any posts in it can appear in Reddit search results.
Final Thoughts
Don’t treat social search as yet another thing to stress about.
Optimizing for social search doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel. Chances are, you’re doing a lot of the stuff in this article already – you just need to do it more strategically to give yourself the best chance of showing up in social search results.
You’ll be surprised how much you can achieve just by spending a little time researching keywords and adding them to your profile, captions, and hashtags.
Want to learn more about the latest social media trends? Sign up for one of our upcoming social media conferences.
Featured image by Freepik.
