Welcome to the first issue of ChatterBlast’s ongoing Search Experience Optimization (SXO) series!
Online discovery is going through some drastic changes. Social media platforms have been quietly turning into search engines, by adding query boxes and search tabs, layering AI to summarize answers, and surfacing topical results on your for-you page. At the same time, traditional search engines are increasingly indexing social content, with AI-powered search experiences pulling content directly from social platforms.
The result: search and social are merging, and Gen Z is leading the charge.
Search is Social
There have been many instances where search engines have tried to dip their toes into the social media landscape. The challenge is that search engines have been the go-to place for finding information, but always struggled to capitalize on the sharing of that information.
It all began with Yahoo in the 1990s. By combining its search engine with email, it became a major driver for news gathering and sharing. The company took further steps by acquiring Tumblr in 2013, but the implementation was mostly unsuccessful. At the same time, Microsoft developed MSN, which incorporated search and Microsoft Office tools (including email). MSN became the default web portal for Windows, offering a one-stop shop for discovery, much like Yahoo.
Google was much slower to embrace social media. With the development of Orkut, as well as the purchases of YouTube and Blogger, Google tried to bring all of those concepts together with Google+. It had a large user base, mostly due to its accessible integration with Gmail, but it still failed to gather the engagement of other social media networks. Separately, it began developing the Google Feed, later rebranded to Discover, which is an RSS-feed based platform that functions much like MSN: a web portal for Chrome that brought together various Google services and opportunities to engage and explore content.
Up until the 2020s, search engines tended to refrain from indexing content from social media (i.e., including it in their search results), let alone giving it high ranks. That changed in 2022, when Google launched a Discussions and Forums feature, later rebranded to “Perspectives,” which highlights relevant threads of online discussions from platforms like Reddit and Quora, now containing content from other social media platforms. That same year, Google started rolling out the so-called “helpful content” update, which focused on promoting “people-first” content. More recently, Instagram began allowing content from professional accounts to be indexed by Google. If you’ve used Google or Bing recently, you may have noticed posts from other sites such as LinkedIn and Threads become much more prominent as well.
Social is Search
Social media platforms have had search functions for years, from the ability to search individual users, to X/Twitter’s use of hashtags as a method of aggregating posts related to trending topics. But the push to embrace the search functions we know today was amplified with TikTok, when it began rolling out search ads in 2022. The company then struck a partnership with Google that allowed users to get those search results right on the social platform.
From its ability to search keywords, hashtags, sounds, and users, to TikTok’s UX being optimized for doomscrolling, the platform has been primed for an engaging search and discovery experience. This was further amplified when highly engaging comments began turning key phrases into clickable blue links, allowing users to continue engaging and discovering new content, giving instant gratification to one of our most primal instincts: curiosity.
Like anything else these days, executives found a way to shoehorn in some AI features. To no surprise, results varied from misinformation to pure irrelevance, causing great controversy. It all came together with the introduction of Search Highlights which, much like Google’s AI Overviews, summarized search results into concise sentences, as opposed to a list of links and resources. The infamous copycat of tech, also known as Meta, has followed suit by infusing Meta AI into its search feature on both Instagram and Facebook.
So What?
If someone wants to find information about something, where should they go? With the embrace of AI, both search engines and social media platforms can now offer quick and succinct answers. One way of thinking about their differences is that social media’s AI search will provide results from websites, as well as any related content that can be found within that specific social media platform. Search engines will provide results from websites, in addition to related content from an array of social media platforms. The tonality, complexity, and richness of each response will vary since each platform uses a different AI model.
The results of this enmeshment and blurring of lines are undeniable. A study by Sprout Social found that more than 1 in 3 consumers across age groups prefer searching on social platforms first for product reviews and recommendations. Another study conducted by Forbes found that a quarter of participants said they primarily use social media to search online, while Gen Z uses TikTok over Google to search for various topics. Adobe conducted a similar study, and it found that over 2 in 5 Americans use TikTok as a search engine, while nearly 1 in 10 Gen Zers are more likely to rely on TikTok than Google as a search engine.
But what does this mean for businesses? Essentially, users will be able to be targeted across the purchasing funnel in either platform. Traditionally social media is used as a “top of funnel” medium, where a user doesn’t have much of a clue of what they’re looking for. Oftentimes they may not be looking for anything specifically, which is why it’s commonly used to generate demand. On the other hand, search engines were thought of as a “bottom of the funnel” medium, because since a user discovers content through inquiries, the user likely already has some knowledge of either the brand, product, or service offering. In other words, when users go to search, they typically already have some idea of what they’re looking for. It’s usually not a demand generator, but a demand capturer.
The bottom line: to be found, you have to be everywhere. Tech companies are leveraging AI with its common chatbot UX to make a seamless and easily adoptable transition into “everything apps.” With record-breaking stock valuations, there’s a need for them to become everything for everyone. Being present across the user journey is key to gathering the data that attracts business.
The digital world is becoming more complex and crowded by the day, which means businesses need to rethink how—and where—they’re showing up. ChatterBlast’s custom Search Experience Optimization (SXO) approach encompasses everything clients need to stay discoverable and relevant across the entire digital ecosystem, from AISEO to GEO. Contact us to learn more.
