Think about the last time you wanted to find a good restaurant in a suburb you don’t know that well. Or you were looking for a skincare product that actually works. Or you wanted to figure out which tradie to hire for a renovation.
Did you open Google? Or did you open Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube?
If you’re under 35, there’s a decent chance it was the latter. And if you’re over 35, you probably know someone who does this without thinking twice about it. The behaviour started with Gen Z, but it’s well and truly spreading beyond them now, and for businesses that rely on being found online, it changes a lot.
Social media has quietly become a search engine. Not a replacement for Google, but a parallel discovery system that millions of people are using every day to research products, find services, get recommendations, and make purchasing decisions. The platforms that were built for sharing photos and connecting with friends have evolved into something that looks a lot more like search infrastructure than anyone anticipated.
At Multimediax, we’ve been watching this shift accelerate over the past few years. The businesses that understand it are building a real competitive advantage. The ones that don’t are creating content that gets seen, but not found.
What Social Search Actually Means
It’s worth being clear about what social search actually is, because it’s easy to confuse with passive content discovery.
Passive discovery is when someone is scrolling their feed and content finds them. An algorithm surfaces a product they weren’t looking for. A creator’s video appears because they watched something similar last week. That’s been happening on social platforms for years.
Social search is something different. It’s when a user opens TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn and actively types a query into the search bar with a specific intent. “Best coffee shops in Surry Hills.” “How to remove wallpaper without damaging plaster.” “Is X accounting software worth it for small business.” “Which digital marketing agency should I use.“
That’s not scrolling. That’s searching. And it’s happening at a scale that most businesses haven’t fully come to terms with yet.
The distinction matters because it changes what you need to create. Content built purely for passive discovery is optimised for stopping the scroll, which means visual hooks, trending audio, and entertainment value. Content built for social search needs to answer a specific question clearly, which means keyword-rich captions, structured information, and genuine usefulness. The best social content in 2026 does both, but most brands are only doing one.
The Numbers That Make This Impossible to Ignore
This isn’t a theoretical trend, the data from multiple large scale studies over 2024 and 2025 is remarkably consistent, and it tells a clear story.
- 1 in 3 consumers now skip Google entirely and start their search journey on social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, rising to more than 1 in 2 for Gen Z (Sprout Social, Q2 2025)
- Instagram leads Gen Z product discovery at 30.4%, followed by TikTok at 23.2%. Google now trails at 18.8% for this demographic (GRIN, 2025)
- 64% of Gen Z use TikTok as a primary search engine, with 51% preferring it over Google for information discovery (Adobe / Revel Interactive, 2025)
- Fashion-related searches on TikTok receive 503% more queries than the equivalent terms on Google (Rise at Seven, 2025)
- Brands that go social first see 10% higher annual revenue growth compared to those that don’t (Deloitte Digital)
- 76% of all consumers and rising to 90% of Gen Z say they’ve made a purchase in the last six months based on content they saw on social media
For businesses still allocating their entire digital marketing budget around Google visibility and traditional SEO, these numbers represent a gap that is quietly growing every month. And the last stat is the one worth sitting with, this isn’t just a discovery shift. It’s a conversion shift too.
Why People Search on Social Differently to Google
Understanding why people are using social platforms to search is actually more useful than just knowing that they are, because it helps you understand what kind of content needs to exist for them to find you.
There are three genuinely distinct reasons people prefer social search for certain types of queries, and they’re worth understanding properly.
Visual results feel more trustworthy than text links. When someone searches “best Thai restaurant in Newtown” on Google, they get a list of websites, some star ratings, and maybe a few photos. When they search the same thing on TikTok or Instagram, they get actual videos of real people eating there, filming the food, talking about their experience. One of those feels like a business description. The other feels like a recommendation from someone who’s been there. For anything experiential or product-related, the social result is simply more convincing.
Authenticity beats authority for younger audiences. Google’s algorithm rewards domain authority, backlinks, and SEO signals. TikTok and Instagram reward real people sharing real experiences. Gen Z in particular has grown up with a finely tuned radar for marketing content, and they trust UGC and creator content in a way they simply don’t trust brand websites or Google Ads. When an influencer they follow recommends something, it carries weight that no search ranking can replicate.
The format matches the intent. A 45 second video that shows you exactly how to do something, or tells you whether a product is actually worth buying, often answers the question better and faster than a 1200 word blog post. For quick, visual, or lifestyle queries, short form video is just a better format for the answer. The medium fits the question in a way that text based search results don’t always manage.
It’s Not Just Gen Z Anymore
This is the part that a lot of businesses don’t fully register when they first hear about social search. They hear “Gen Z uses TikTok to search” and they think “well, that’s relevant for consumer brands targeting young people, but not really for us.”
That conclusion is becoming less accurate every year.
The behaviour that started with Gen Z is moving steadily up the demographic ladder. Millennials, now in their late 20s to early 40s, are increasingly social first for lifestyle, home, food, and product decisions. YouTube has always had a strong cross demographic search presence for how to content. Pinterest has functioned as a visual search engine for years, and its user base skews heavily toward Millennial women with significant purchasing power.
LinkedIn is becoming a genuine discovery and research platform for professional audiences and B2B buyers. Users aged 25 to 34 now make up the largest age group on LinkedIn, and that audience is increasingly using it to find thought leadership, compare agencies and vendors, and research business decisions. If your clients or prospective clients are in that bracket and you have no searchable presence on LinkedIn, you’re invisible during an important part of their consideration process.
Reddit deserves a mention too. It’s increasingly appearing directly in Google search results for “best X” and “is X worth it” type queries, because users trust peer recommendations and community advice over branded content. Someone researching your industry or your agency will often encounter Reddit threads before they encounter your website.
The window for early advantage on social search is still open, but it’s narrowing. The businesses building their social content around discoverability right now are setting themselves up for compounding visibility gains over the next few years.
Google Noticed, and It’s Responding
One of the clearest signals that social search is real and significant is how Google itself has responded to it.
In July 2025, Google began indexing public Instagram posts and profiles. That’s a major development that most businesses haven’t fully absorbed yet. It means your Instagram content is now surfacing in Google search results, which creates a double opportunity. A well optimised Instagram post can be found both inside Instagram’s own search and through a traditional Google search. If you’re writing keyword rich captions, your social content is now contributing to your broader SEO visibility in a way it simply wasn’t before.
TikTok content has also been appearing in Google results for some time. YouTube, obviously, has always been a Google property and has always fed into search. The direction is clear: the traditional line between social content and search content is dissolving, and platforms are increasingly cross-indexing each other’s content.
This is good news for businesses willing to think about their social content strategically. Every piece of content you publish on social is now potentially findable through multiple discovery paths, not just the platform’s own feed or search. The same effort that builds your social presence is now also building your search presence, but only if the content is structured to be found in the first place.
Where the Search Behaviour Is Actually Happening, Platform by Platform
Not all social search is the same, and different platforms are being used to search for different types of things. Understanding this is important because it affects where you should be investing your content effort.
TikTok is where product reviews, recommendations, how to content, restaurant and venue discovery, and lifestyle queries are happening at the highest velocity, particularly for under 35 audiences. Fashion related searches on TikTok receive 503% more queries than the equivalent terms on Google. For consumer brands, this is the platform where social search behaviour is most advanced and where early optimisation investment has the clearest payoff. Best used for:
- Product reviews and recommendations
- Restaurant, venue, and experience discovery
- How to and tutorial content
- Lifestyle, fashion, beauty, and travel queries
Instagram has become a primary product research platform, with 60% of users now using it for product research, up 16% year on year. The rollout of full keyword search across captions, on screen text, and alt text has transformed it into a searchable product and brand discovery engine. Best used for:
- Product and brand discovery
- Local business and service research
- Visual inspiration and lifestyle content
- Behind the scenes and authenticity driven brand content
YouTube has functioned as a search engine for years, and its dominance in that category keeps growing. 68% of marketing leaders now identify it as the highest-impact social platform for their business. The search intent on YouTube is often higher than on other social platforms because people arrive specifically looking for an answer. Best used for:
- How to and tutorial content
- Long form product comparisons and reviews
- Educational and explainer content
- B2C and B2B thought leadership
LinkedIn is becoming a genuinely important search surface for B2B businesses. Users who post video content on LinkedIn see 3x follower growth, which is a good indication of where the platform’s algorithm is heading. If your customers are business decision-makers, LinkedIn search visibility matters. Best used for:
- B2B thought leadership and industry commentary
- Service provider and agency research
- Professional how to and career content
- Company and founder brand building
Pinterest has operated as a visual search engine for a long time and rewards SEO-style optimisation more explicitly than most social platforms. Keyword rich board titles, pin descriptions, and profile optimisation all directly influence discoverability. Best used for:
- Design, home, and interiors inspiration
- Events, weddings, and lifestyle planning
- Fashion and beauty discovery
- Recipe and food content
Reddit is showing up in Google results with increasing frequency for research-oriented queries. People searching “best digital marketing agency Sydney” or “is X software worth it” are regularly landing on Reddit threads because Google treats community discussion as high-trust content. You can’t really optimise for Reddit the same way you can for other platforms, but being aware that potential clients may encounter community conversations about your industry or your agency is worth factoring into your overall content thinking.
What This Means for How You Create Content
So, the obvious question: what does a business actually do with all of this?
The honest answer is that it requires a mindset shift more than a complete overhaul. Most businesses can adapt their existing content approach to perform better in social search without dramatically increasing their workload. The key changes are about intention and structure, not necessarily volume.
- Treat captions like copy. Social search works a lot like traditional SEO in that keywords need to exist in the right places for the platform to match your content to a query. Write captions that actually describe what the content is about, use the language your audience uses when they search, and put the most important keyword early in the caption before it gets cut off.
- On screen text in video is a ranking signal. Platforms are increasingly indexing the text that appears visually in videos, not just captions and hashtags. The words that appear on screen now contribute to how content gets classified and surfaced. Use them deliberately, not just decoratively.
- Spoken words are being indexed too. Audio is increasingly being processed and indexed by social platform algorithms. What you say in a video, not just what you write around it, contributes to how it gets classified. This is still developing, but it’s moving quickly and worth accounting for now.
- Plan content around search intent, not just topics. Before creating a piece of content, ask what specific question it answers and whether anyone is actively searching for that answer. Content that addresses real queries your audience is typing into search bars will consistently outperform content that’s just broadly relevant to your industry.
- Alt text is underused and surprisingly valuable. Adding descriptive, keyword-rich alt text to images on Instagram and Pinterest improves both accessibility and discoverability. Most brands either skip it or write something generic. It takes thirty seconds and it’s one of those small things that compounds over time.
What This Means for Businesses Working with a Social Media Agency
If you’re working with an agency to manage your social media, the social search shift is worth raising explicitly in your next conversation.
The question to ask is: are we building content to be found, or just to be seen? Those are different briefs. A content calendar built around posting frequency, engagement metrics, and brand awareness is a reasonable foundation, but it’s not the same as a social search strategy. The two can and should coexist, but if discoverability and lead generation are part of what you’re trying to achieve through social, the content needs to be built with search intent from the start.
At Multimediax, we build social media strategies that factor in discoverability from the brief stage, not as an afterthought. That means keyword research that spans both traditional search and social platform search, content structures that align with how people actually search on each platform, and measurement that goes beyond likes and reach to track the business outcomes that actually matter.
Frequently Asked Questions About Social Media and Search
Not replacing, but competing for specific types of queries. For product discovery, recommendations, how to content, and visual research, social platforms are already the primary search destination for significant portions of the population, particularly Gen Z and Millennials. Google still dominates for web traffic referrals and in depth informational queries, but the share of total search intent being captured by social platforms is growing steadily year on year.
TikTok and Instagram are the fastest growing social search platforms, particularly for consumer product discovery and lifestyle queries. YouTube has long operated as a search engine for how to and video content. Pinterest is a well established visual search engine. LinkedIn is increasingly important for B2B and professional discovery. Reddit frequently appears in Google results for peer review and recommendation queries.
Yes, and increasingly so. From July 2025, Google began indexing public Instagram posts and profiles. TikTok content also appears in Google results. YouTube has always been indexed by Google. This means well-optimised social content can be discovered through both the platform’s own search and through traditional Google search, creating a double visibility opportunity for businesses that structure their content correctly.
The core principles are similar to traditional SEO applied to a social context. Use keywords in captions, prioritise the first line of copy before it gets truncated, use descriptive on screen text in videos, write meaningful alt text on images, and use hashtags as semantic signals rather than just broad reach tools. Most importantly, plan content around specific questions your audience is actively searching for rather than just topics that are broadly relevant to your brand.
Yes. LinkedIn search is growing rapidly as a B2B discovery and research platform. YouTube is heavily used for product comparison and professional how to content by business decision makers. Reddit increasingly surfaces in Google results for industry and vendor research queries. B2B buyers don’t search for business solutions exclusively on Google, and a social search strategy that factors in professional platforms is becoming an important part of B2B marketing.
Track branded search volume growth over time, monitor direct traffic trends, look at referral traffic from individual social platforms in your analytics, and pay attention to the quality and intent level of leads coming through social channels. Social search often contributes to earlier stages of the buyer journey that don’t show up in last click attribution, so it’s worth looking at assisted conversions and multi touch attribution data if you have it available.
Final Thoughts
Social media being a search engine isn’t a trend that’s coming. It’s already here, already influencing how your potential customers find businesses like yours, and already separating the brands that are discoverable from the ones that are active but invisible.
The good news is that the principles aren’t new. Keyword thinking, structured content, genuine usefulness, and clear answers to real questions. These are the foundations of good search optimisation, whether the search is happening on Google or on TikTok. The application is different, but the underlying logic is the same.
What does need to change is the intention behind how social content gets made. Content created purely to fill a posting schedule or hit an engagement metric is doing a different job to content created to be found by someone actively searching for what you offer. Both have value, but only one of them is a growth channel.
The businesses that figure that out right away will have a meaningful advantage over the ones that wait until it’s obvious.
Multimediax is a Sydney based digital marketing agency specialising in social media marketing, SEO, paid search, web design, and growth strategy. Founded in 2001, we work with businesses across Australia to build digital platforms and marketing systems that drive measurable results. To talk about a social media strategy built for discoverability and real business outcomes, get in touch with the team.
