TikTok, the popular social network, is used for more than just watching short videos. With more than three million downloads worldwide and a growing audience, the app’s use as a search engine has been increasing rapidly, to the point that many wonder if it could dethrone Google and end its supremacy.
Back in 2021, web security and performance company Cloudflare reported that TikTok had surpassed Google in number of searches on its platform. Information that coincides with that revealed by Google’s senior vice president, Prabhakar Raghavan, at the Brainstorm Techconference in July last year, where he stated that the company’s studies had revealed that “almost 40% of young people, when they are looking for a place to eat, don’t go to Google Maps or Google search. They go to TikTok or Instagram.”
In this way, Raghavan recognized the change of direction of Generation Z when it comes to obtaining information on the Internet. Using TikTok as a search engine has many advantages: it allows you to have updated information quickly; it has an algorithm that recommends what you like the most; and, above all, it allows you to see interesting content.
But, although the app’s popularity for searching for relevant information is growing (something the app itself wants to exploit by adding a shopping function), this usage is far from resembling that of the all-powerful Google.
Many voices are already saying that, although TikTok is a very useful tool for the younger generation, “to suggest that TikTok will overtake Google as the world’s number one search engine, let alone make it obsolete, is going too far“.
“Google will continue to have the most information on how people search, understanding how they process information and human behavior, and with its updates to create more dynamic results, it will continue to be the single source for gathering information from multiple touch points,” Marina Glavan, senior strategist at marketing agency AMV BBDO, tells EuroNews in an interview.
