Do Gen Z Use TikTok Search More Than Google?

In the marketing world, it's becoming increasingly common to hear that young people are using TikTok for search more than they use Google. (See Adweek, ABC News and Business Insider for examples). This is typically shared as evidence that we're going to have to rethink our ways of working if we want to reach this wacky new generation. The idea also fits with wider trends like the rapid growth of TikTok and growing dissatisfaction with Google's search results. Like a lot of pervasive ideas it seems to have taken on a life of it's own, so I was interested to find the source and hopefully some actual data behind it.

My first stop was a New York Time article titled 'For Gen Z, TikTok Is the New Search Engine'. With a headline like that I was sure this would be backed up by some good data... right? The article features some comments from a selection of young people who used TikTok, discussing about how they used its search function. The article only featured one data point relating to this, quoted from Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan:

“In our studies, something like almost 40 percent 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.”

This quote is taken from about minute 4 of this video from Fortune's Brainstorm Tech 2022.

This is a very compelling statistic, and might be symptomatic of wider trends, but it clearly doesn't indicate that Gen Z uses TikTok more than Google for searches. It tells us that Google search, and Google Maps in particular has some way to go to better meet the needs of this demographic for this type of search. Prabhakar goes on to talk about how maps in general, and therefore Google maps, are not a familiar way of reading information for young people and those in developing countries.

As Rebecca Sentance points out in Econsultancy what started as "something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch" often ends up misquoted as basically "almost half of young people choose TikTok over Google, for all searches".

Here's how Adweek chose to report it:

I'm not sure anyone who has seen or read Prabhakar's comments would take them to mean that TikTok had overtaken Google for search, so I did some more digging. I found a study by Adobe, based on a survey of 808 people, exploring how young people use TikTok search.

The results include:

• Nearly 1 in 10 Gen Zers said they were more likely to rely on TikTok than Google as a Search Engine.
• 41% of consumers have used TikTok as a Search Engine.
• 64% of Gen Z respondents have used TikTok as a Search Engine.
• 91% of people surveyed (across all generations) found Google most helpful when searching for information compared to 17% for TikTok.

Again, these are some compelling statistics, and they may indicative of a trend, but they definitely don't say that Gen Z uses TikTok search more than Google. In fact, Adobe say that 9 out of 10 Gen Z respondents were more likely to use Google.

One article which I found summarising the Adobe study, which I won't link to, reported it like this:

It's easy to see how a decent study can get misreported and end up being the source of misinformation.

So far neither Google nor Adobe's data backs up the idea that Gen Z are choosing TikTok over Google for search in general. Next I found a study by Her Campus Media, a Gen Z media and college marketing company.

Their results, as detailed in Search Engine Land, include this statistic:

"51% of survey respondents choose TikTok over Google as their search engine"

That's more like it! 51% is sort of most people, if you squint. However, it's worth noting their survey was promoted through their newsletters and social accounts, so isn't a snapshot of the general gen z population. It was completed by 1,821 people in the US, 97% of which were female and 71% were college students.

So perhaps, if you extrapolate this, a reasonable statistic to add to your PowerPoint about reaching Gen Z is:

"Around half of young female American college students, with an interest in marketing, are more inclined to use TikTok search than Google search."

Bit wordy though, isn't it?

So, what did we learn by looking for the real data behind this idea?

1. Data literacy rates are low.
2. Marketers are much more inclined to shout about compelling ideas than share real data or try and understand how reliable that data is.
3. Information moves fast on the internet and it tends to get warped or exaggerated as it moves.
4. Not everyone in a generation does the same thing in the same way.
5. TikTok is increasingly being used as a search engine, particularly by younger people. People are using it to search for recipes, music, fashion etc. (see the Adobe study for a good breakdown of topics).