Can TikTok take on Google as a Search Engine?

In biology, adaptation refers to features developed to achieve a particular function, whereas exaptation refers to features developed for one function but later discovered to have use for another.

Over the last few months a related trend has surfaced: TikTok being used as a search engine.

There are also many amazing accounts on this by the tech media: David Pierce from The Verge used TikTok as a search engine for a month to see how it went.

Google also noticed the trend and released an internal report appoint it. As a response, they released new features such as more in-depth “Knowledge Panels”.

Those accounts are all amazing but I wanted to expand on their accounts and and dive deeper into the UX of it.

Let’s take a look:

1️. The information density variable.

Elena Cavender on Mashable highlights how recipes, restaurants, and travel recommendations are the most common use cases.

For those categories, TikTok works well because a lot of the information that the user wants is passed through visually, precisely what the platform is designed for.

For other types of information such as understanding location, price or any variable that we’d like to make clear comparisons, Google’s UI offer a better experience.

I can see users being more likely to find places that spark their interest on TikTok, but probably using Google’s support in understanding pricing, plan an itinerary or to go deeper on any topic.

When comparing query results for different categories, it’s clear that Google offers much more depth of data in the form of numbers for example, whereas TikTok has appealing videos that might serve as an entry point to the topic being searched.

2. Ad-free, knowledge-rich results.

The UX of ads are a debatable topic at the intersection of design and marketing.

When you search on Google, the first results are ads. For the rest, it is not unusual to find blogs clearly optimized for SEO that aren’t always the most relevant for users.

TikTok on the other hand, has no ads and a query optimized based on what TikTok knows about you (which often times is a lot).

Ads are famous for reducing the quality of UX, so this give an edge for TikTok in creating a more straightforward and pleasant experience.

3️. Different Social Proof and Credibility dynamics.

Rules on TikTok are better understood (a balance between what the algorithm knows about you and what is popular) and users can check credibility and social proof by looking at the person’s profile, which helps with decision making.

The creator putting their face out there to produce content also gives a perception of proximity and bigger “skin in the game” from their part: it’s harder to tell blunt lies when you’re putting your face out there in video compared to while paying ghost writers for SEO-optimized blog posts.

What might be a disadvantage for Google is the fact that SEO rules are unclear for the general public and there’s no quick way to address the credibility on the results and what others think about them.

4️. Collections feature can make querying less relevant over time for visual items.

As I said before, TikTok is mostly a platform that shows you things you might like based on what they know about you.

They recently shipped a Collections feature that allows to use the feature similarly to Pinterest: as a place to gather inspiration to act on in the future.

Combine that feature with how much time people spend on TikTok and how much it knows about users and it’s likely that over time you’ll rely on your collection of TikToks saved to plan the next dinner over making any query at all.

I’d still expect this to still be limited to visually-driven decisions.

Conclusion

To be fair, we’re far from able to say that TikTok will replace Google in anyway. It’s a ridiculously popular and useful resource that has an awesome company behind.

It’s still interesting to notice and speculate second order effects of general behavioral trends such as shorter attention spans and the tendency to prefer consuming information through videos.

Thanks for reading it.

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Dan (@dandemello)