I Spent a Week Using Only TikTok for Search

Google is reportedly in “code red” mode, deploying sources and calling in its cofounders to deal with perceived threats to its extraordinarily dominant search engine. The risk du jour is ChatGPT—an AI-powered giant language mannequin that can be serving to us write time period papers and poetry, draft laws, and make medical diagnoses. But there’s one other automobile arising the rear within the search race. That is TikTok.

TikTok for search? you would possibly ask. How may a twitchy video app crammed with dancing teenagers, cat memes, meals hacks, and cringey stunts make it easier to discover a monetary adviser or a practice timetable, and even search outcomes for your self? It will depend on what your interpretation of “search” is, however in case you’re in search of much less particular, extra entertaining outcomes—a search course of extra akin to social discovery—then TikTok is making a robust play. In 2021, content material supply community Cloudflare reported that Tiktok.com had overtaken Google because the world’s most visited internet area. And final 12 months a senior vp of search at Google famous that 40 % of younger web customers are recurrently turning to TikTok or Instagram for search. (TikTok has not responded to inquiries about search tendencies.) 

Further proof: When I shared in a WIRED Slack channel that I would strive utilizing TikTok search for a week, two youthful colleagues who’re generationally distinct from me stated, fwiw, in addition they search for practically all the things on TikTok. So on a current Tuesday I opened up TikTok and started my experiment, with the short touchscreen typing of gentle desperation.

Day One

I’m not what you’ll name tremendous energetic on TikTok. I observe a few dozen individuals, and I’ve posted one video (cat). At instances I have been sucked into the vortex of the app’s For You web page, which exhibits movies that TikTok’s algorithm has decided I would possibly like. Part of the explanation why I don’t use the app a lot is because of safety and privateness considerations. TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese firm ByteDance, lately admitted that a few of its employees had accessed the placement knowledge of American journalists to attempt to determine their sources (i.e. spied on them). Even with this information, I nonetheless have a TikTok account, as a result of I check a lot of apps. 

My colleagues’ use of TikTok search intrigues me. It felt like there was a slight divide earlier than due to age, however now it’s a huge yawn, and they’re on the facet of oxygen consumption and I am on the drained facet. Was my story already previous? The information that I was post-college when Google went public, or that I was within the room when Steve Ballmer shouted “Bing it!” and revealed Microsoft’s new search engine, give me completely no cred right here.

The very first thing I search for is how one can pair an AirTag, a present bestowed upon me due to my behavior of dropping my keys. TikTok delivers right here. I am in a position to watch the highest video in outcomes, 31 seconds lengthy, with out ever having to scroll by way of the handfuls of different movies in outcomes. And as a result of it’s a residing thumbnail, I don’t even need to faucet on the video to listen to its audio. It’s fast and simple. This goes to be enjoyable.

Day Two

I get up and bear in mind I have a job that entails plenty of thorough on-line searches. I open TikTok and search for particular details about Apple’s enterprise, just like the variety of staff who work in Apple’s retail shops. I can’t appear to seek out the reply there, however I do uncover a couple of useful hacks (how one can write off your $1,100 iPhone in your taxes so that you’re paying solely half) and parodies of Apple Store interactions (the “employee” apologizes for an hour-long wait time, six persons are presently being helped, and there are solely 90 staff).

My editor says, fairly actually, “Let me Google that for you.” TikTok, it seems, is just not a portal to 10-Okay experiences on SEC.gov. It’s a portal to extra TikTok. 

Later that day I open TikTok once more, and it recommends an account known as “oldloserinbrooklyn,” notably this particular person’s 2023 predictions, the highest of which is “more print magazines closing.” I am not making this up.