“Just Google it”. The phrase is a universal shorthand for “search for it online”. The fact it is so ubiquitous underlines Google’s dominant position at the top of the search engine pile.

That success was built on continuous improvements to its PageRank algorithm, its massive web index, its ease of usability, and ecosystem of other services – giving Google a search market share of over 90%.

So you might be forgiven for thinking that Google could safely laugh off the idea of losing market share to an indirect competitor like TikTok, but recent changes in the social video giant’s approach to search advertising have made this surprisingly likely. 

For an idea of just how dominant Google is in the realm of search, just ask Microsoft how happy it is with Bing’s anaemic 3.5% market share (Or better yet, Ask Jeeves). Google has had a 20 year run of demolishing the competition, but its recent tinkering and ruining of its search function has jeopardised its position. This is in part due to the Google-ads side of the business muscling in on the Google-search side of the business – pointed to by many as the reason for worsening search results. Users were seeing more paid-for and affiliate marketing results, rather than results that were the most useful. 

Eat out for lunch, or eat rocks?

This was compounded by Google’s recent implementation of AI at the top of its search results list, which encouraged users to add glue to their pizzas, and to eat rocks. Meanwhile TikTok has been quietly beefing up its search credentials among its core audience of Gen Z. A study by Adobe exploring how young people use TikTok search found that 41% of consumers have used TikTok as a Search Engine, rising to 64% among Gen Z respondents. However only 1 in 10 Gen Zers said they were more likely to rely on TikTok than Google as a Search Engine.

Digging a little deeper into the data, an often cited quote from Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan goes: “In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search. They go to TikTok or Instagram”. That doesn’t mean that almost half of young people have switched to using TikTok over Google search for everything, but it does show that TikTok could be the preference for searching for certain things, particularly among Gen Z. 

Fragmentation of media buying

So why is that potentially concerning for Google? Well, because of how TikTok is starting to monetise its search function, with it recently entering the search advertising space. What that means for users is that when they begin typing on TikTok’s search icon, ads will now appear within the search results, integrated naturally into the user’s in-feed experience. In ad-speech, this approach ensures that ads are both contextually relevant and will drive high engagement. On the advertiser’s side: TikTok Search Ads Campaign comes with a suite of planning features, keyword targeting, bidding capabilities and creative tools.

The idea of losing search engine market share would be bad for Google, but the idea of losing potential ad revenue to anyone, especially TikTok, would be much more concerning. Given just how dominant Google’s search advertising market share is, any dollar that is spent advertising on any other platform is usually a dollar that isn’t being spent with Google. The fact that this threat is coming from a social media platform – an area that Google has spectacularly failed to crack – adds salt to the wound. 

The jury is still out on exactly how effective TikTok’s take on search advertising will be. But it speaks to a wider trend of diversification in the advertising space. Given how differently Gen Z engages with almost everything online, and how Google is giving people reasons not to use its search engine, TikTok won’t be the last competitor eyeing up their own slice of the $300Bn search advertising pie.