Social media’s potential as the king of search

THOSE of us old enough will remember the days when the choice of search engines was at an all-time high. There was Webcrawler, AltaVista, Excite, the good old Ask Jeeves, and many more, before Google came along and changed the game with its relevance algorithm.

Google has dominated the space ever since, but new developments have increasingly threatened its position as the king of search.

Microsoft has launched a new version of Bing in beta, powered by an upgraded version of the artificial intelligence (AI) technology that fuels OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Google is, of course, responding with its own plans around Bard, its AI-powered platform that’s also set to change the way we search for things online.

While it certainly seems as though the search engine wars are between two key players, it would be myopic to overlook the third player arguably in the battle ring: social media platforms.

According to the Digital 2023 report launched by Meltwater and We Are Social, many people actively visit social media platforms specifically to learn about brands. For instance, finding products to purchase is one of the primary reasons why Internet users aged 16 to 64 use social media.

The most important finding relates to sources of brand discovery across age groups. While search engines continue to dominate amongst Internet users aged 25 to 54, they play a smaller role for those aged 16 to 24. These younger netizens are now more likely to discover new products and services via social media ads than through search engines.

And this isn’t news to Google executives. Prabhakar Raghavan, who runs Google’s Knowledge and Information, has said, “We keep learning over and over again that new Internet users do not have the expectations and the mindset to which we have become accustomed… their queries… are completely different.”

In fact, according to their internal research, about 40 per cent of young users will look for a lunch venue on TikTok or Instagram, rather than Google Maps or search.

But why? What is it about social media that makes it so much more attractive to young users?

Discovery rather than search

Younger audiences are starting their search from a place of curiosity and expect to be led down a fun rabbit hole of new ideas, rather than be directed to a list of brands or products. There is a preference for “serendipitous” discovery, and finding information does not mean what it used to.

Ultimately, social media algorithms can surface information before we even know what we are looking for. The Digital 2023 report found 27 per cent of social media users aged 16 to 64 use social media mainly to find inspiration for things to do and buy. On platforms such as TikTok, users can quickly and easily identify whether a search result reflects or is at least relevant to “people like me”.

TikTok in particular has been in the limelight in conversations around social as search. The combination of time spent on TikTok and its user-friendly features such as hashtags, tags and places, have resulted in the rise of TikTok as a search platform.

For TikTok, the top reasons for search and discovery by young users are speed to insights, its visual mode of content in the form of a video, and personalised content based on user preferences.

Despite the rise of TikTok, Instagram still ranks on top when it comes to social media platforms used to research brands, with more than 60 per cent of active users citing the use of Instagram for this purpose. Facebook ranks second in terms of share of users who visit the platform to learn about brands.

It is worth highlighting that this data suggests Facebook attracts the greatest absolute number of social searchers.

Close to 83 per cent of active social media users use at least one of the top eight popular social media platforms to research brands and products. While not overtaking search engines entirely, there’s absolutely a case for brands to ensure their social strategy and content is optimised for this demand, covering all angles of product information and brand experiences.

The main difference lies in the way social media is used versus search engines – and it comes down to social proof. Young users crowdsource recommendations on social media and crave authentic user-generated content because it feeds into influencer-style behaviour for decision-making, based on what other people like, where they shop, and what they recommend.

This user-generated content can be analysed to gain insights into consumer preferences and pain points, which have a major impact on brand visibility, and the ability for consumers to further verify these experiences based on comments posted in response to the videos.

Plus, social search can increase a brand’s social media reach and website traffic, as users are kept on social platforms for longer periods of time.

Social media promises new opportunities for content engagement and path to purchase, and it’s crucial for brands to understand this potential for search, reviews, participation and community building to work together in a powerful way.

This is why social media is still a key player in the search engine wars – because even though the fight is big, and AI is taking most of the glory at the moment, social media has the ability to harness creator-driven content that is all based around relevance, which is always a better success metric than reach.

The writer is vice-president of enterprise (Apac) and partner at Meltwater Asia-Pacific