The social search practice
They're not Googling you.
They're searching here.
TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest are where product discovery starts for the under-35 buyer. Social search is the discipline of ranking inside those platforms — keywords, captions, content structure and profiles engineered to be found.
01 · What changed
The search box moved into the feed.
Platforms indexed their content. Buyers learned to search natively. And the algorithms started rewarding relevance signals that look a lot like classic SEO — keywords in captions and on-screen text, watch-time as dwell, saves as backlinks.
Most brands still publish for the scroll and ignore the search. That's the arbitrage: social search inventory is where Google was in 2005 — massive intent, primitive competition.
The agency that owns "be found where they actually search" wins the next buying cycle. That's the whole thesis.
02 · The search stack
Six workstreams. One practice.
Native search-volume mapping per platform — what your buyers type into TikTok, IG, YouTube, and Pinterest, clustered by intent.
Reels, carousels, and videos structured to rank: keyword-front captions, on-screen text, spoken keywords, cover-text discipline.
Handles, names, bios, highlights, and link architecture engineered as landing pages for platform search.
The two platforms where search IS the feed — titles, descriptions, boards, and metadata run like classic SEO.
Location tags, local keywords, and map-adjacent discovery for physical businesses.
Monthly tracked keyword panels per platform: where you rank, who outranks you, and trend deltas — reported beside your engagement metrics.
Share of Discovery.
Engagement tells you how content performed with people who already found you. Share of Discovery tells you how often NEW buyers find you at all. We report both, monthly, per platform.
The new search bar
Your next customer won't Google you.
Search moved into the feed. Under-35 buyers ask TikTok, scroll Instagram, and check YouTube before a search engine ever loads. Social search is the discipline of ranking inside those platforms — keywords, captions, and profiles engineered to be found.
40% of Gen Z starts product and place discovery on TikTok or Instagram, not Google.*
How Social Search works →*Cited: Google internal SVP remarks, 2022; Adobe consumer study, 2024.
Rank where your buyers actually search.
Tell us your handle, the platform you care about, and your work email. A tailored growth plan lands within 24 hours.
Free · No sales call · Response within 24 hours.