SEO for the TikTok and AI Generation: How Search is Changing
A New Era of Search Behaviour is Here
“Googling it” has long been the default solution to any question, commercial intent or fleeting curiosity. However, Google’s grip on search behaviour is loosening, particularly among younger users. This is not only because users are turning to platforms like TikTok and Reddit, but also because Google itself is changing the rules of the game.
Gen Z are increasingly bypassing traditional search engines, opting instead for visual, conversational platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and now even AI assistants like ChatGPT. At the same time, Google is evolving in response, rolling out features like AI Overviews and integrating social content directly into search results. This dual shift is fundamentally altering how people discover, evaluate, and engage with information online.
According to Search Engine Land, up to 41% of users use TikTok for search, while 76% have discovered brands and products through social media. The question is no longer if platforms like TikTok should be treated as search engines – but how SEO strategies must adapt to a landscape where discovery happens everywhere, and AI increasingly mediates the journey.
This is not to say that search has disappeared, but it is evolving at a rapid pace. For SEOs and brands alike, that brings new challenges, but also significant opportunities.
Is Gen Z Searching Differently?
Search for Gen Z is conversational, visual, and most importantly, tailored. This audience isn’t necessarily interested in sifting through the results generated on a traditional SERP – they want fast content that feels:
- Authentic
- Relevant
- Easy to digest
- Instantly useful
Google’s page 1 results often serve a mixture of genuinely useful, authoritative content, and content that’s clearly created for the sole purpose of ranking high on the SERP. Despite the search engine’s regular algorithm updates, and endeavours to ensure the most authentic and trustworthy content is surfaced, younger users are drawn to the more real-time, real-life information that other search methods can offer. Think how-to’s, honest product reviews, and recommendations. With more avenues for discovery than ever available to users, the business model behind search as we know it must adapt.
How is Google Responding?
For the first time since 2015, Google’s search market share dropped below 90% during the last 3 months of 2024. As more ads fill top results, users are finding it more time consuming to discover content that feels high-quality, relevant, and impartial. Whilst Google definitely still serves an important purpose for some search intents, for others, the SERP may now feel a little too crowded and commercial.
Google has been anticipating and responding to these shifts for some time, first with developments such as the Helpful Content Update followed by its rollout of E-E-A-T requirements. More recently, and probably most significantly, we have seen the rollout of AI Overviews transform Google’s SERP. These are short, natural-language answers generated by AI that appear above regular results and are able to answer niche queries by pulling and re-shaping content from across the web.
Next on Google’s agenda is AI Mode, which, as with most Google updates, is rolling out in the US first. This will offer users a conversational search experience, summarising information with speed and nuance.
To be surfaced by AI models, content needs to be:
- Structurally clear
- Contextually rich
- Written in natural, human-first language
- Demonstrably accurate and useful
This means SEO isn’t just about keywords anymore – it’s about semantics and communication. Does your content answer questions like a human? Can it be trusted by AI to deliver accurate information and represent your brand or product in an easily digestible summary?
Is Google Doing Enough to Combat Platform-Specific Search?
The reality is: search is no longer just about Google. Content needs to be optimised to secure AI Overviews, but sites also need to consider implementing an integrated content strategy that covers off TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, or wherever their audience is actually searching.
Despite efforts by Google to offer a more tailored way for users to search, it is difficult to compete with the immediacy and personal feel that content from individual TikTok users, YouTube videos, or forums can often provide. Even Google now integrates TikTok results and Forum & Discussion snippets into its own search results – a clear signal that content discovery is diversifying and decentralising.
What’s Driving the Change?
Options For Faster & More Visual Results
People no longer want to read long blog posts to get one-dimensional answers. They want a short and snappy how-to, visual examples shown in real time, and quick recommendations.
Personal, Algorithm-Driven Discovery
Search isn’t just intentional anymore – it’s predictive. Platforms like TikTok surface what you may not have even known you were looking for. That changes how people engage with content, and how brands must approach visibility.
AI-Powered Answers
With AI summarising search results, brands that don’t structure their content clearly and ensure the right technical criteria is in place for AI crawlers, may find themselves left out of the conversation altogether.
Authenticity and Trust
Social-first content often feels more believable than brand copy. Reviews, creators, and community voices win when trust is low elsewhere.
So… What Should Brands Be Doing?
The answer isn’t to abandon Google, but to adapt your approach to strategy and performance reporting. Winning in the evolving search landscape means integrating strategies where possible, and creating content for a multichannel, search-everywhere experience. Here’s how to start:
Think Platform-First
What works on Google won’t work on TikTok – however, thanks to evolving SERP features, your TikTok content might end up on Google anyway. The same is true for YouTube, Reddit, and other platforms. This overlap means your content must serve two purposes: it should be tailored to the platform’s native format and algorithm, but also answer the kinds of questions users might be asking anywhere. Whether it’s short-form TikToks, long-form YouTube explainers, or social-first carousels, your content strategy should prioritise discoverability across formats – built for the platform, but structured with search intent in mind.
Optimise for AI Crawlers and Natural Language
Clear, human-first language that’s easy to digest should be used within your content. Importantly, sites also need to ensure that their content is set up from a technical perspective to be discoverable for AI crawlers. This means ensuring that the right schema is in place, avoiding over-reliance on Javascript for core content, and considering emerging technical SEO standards like an llms.txt file to help large language models understand and prioritise your pages..
Build an Intent-Driven Content Loop
Today’s users, and particularly the younger generation, don’t follow a linear search journey. They might start on TikTok, dig deeper on YouTube, validate on Reddit, or convert after reading an in-depth blog. To stay relevant, the ideal content strategy should align with this fragmented path and respond to the intent behind each touchpoint. This means identifying what your audience is looking to achieve – learning, comparison, purchasing or validation – and creating content tailored to each of these goals on the relevant platforms.
Rethinking How We Measure SEO Success
Impressions and clicks remain important SEO indicators, but in today’s fragmented, AI-influenced landscape, they no longer tell the whole story. With users increasingly getting answers directly from AI Overviews, and more SERP real estate being filled by TikTok videos, YouTube content, and other rich results, less clicks through to your site may be expected. This isn’t necessarily a sign of failure, but is a reflection of how search is evolving to keep users on-platform, or bypassing traditional search engines entirely.
As a result, visibility itself, whether via AI-generated summaries, embedded video content, or third-party mentions, has become a key outcome of SEO. The challenge for marketers and SEOs is therefore to help senior stakeholders understand this shift: lower click-through rates or fluctuating impressions don’t mean SEO is losing value. Instead, they highlight the need for a broader, more nuanced approach to measuring impact – one that reflects where users really are, and how content is being discovered and consumed.
To Summarise: Search Isn’t Dead, It’s Everywhere
Google certainly won’t vanish any time soon, but it is starting to share the stage.
The future of search is more fragmented, visual, conversational, and AI-curated. Doing well in this space means showing up where your audience is looking, not just where you’re used to being found. Alongside this, SEOs and marketers alike need to reassess the measures of a successful SEO and content strategy.
