People Don’t Google You Anymore. They Search TikTok and Instagram. Can They Find You?
Well, not 100% true, but… Picture how you found the last restaurant you tried, the last tradesperson you hired, or the last thing you bought on a whim. There’s a good chance part of that journey didn’t happen on Google at all. It happened inside a social feed: a TikTok showing the place in action, an Instagram profile you scrolled to check it was legit, a Reddit thread where real people gave their honest verdict.
This isn’t a fringe habit any more. A whole generation of buyers now reaches for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit the way their parents reached for a search engine. Instead of Googling, they’re scrolling. And that changes one of the most important questions your business can ask: when someone goes looking for what you offer, can they actually find you?
For many businesses, the honest answer is no. And they have no idea they’re missing out, because the customers they lose this way never get in touch to say so.
Search has moved into the feed
For two decades, being findable meant ranking on Google. You optimised your website, chased keywords, and hoped to land near the top of the results page. That still matters. It just isn’t the whole story any more.
Social platforms have become search engines in their own right. People type queries straight into TikTok, and Instagram (best brunch in town, how to fix a leaking tap, is this thing actually worth it), and the platforms answer with videos and posts. Those results now compete head-to-head with traditional search listings for your customer’s attention, and they often win, because they feel more real. A short video of the thing in action beats a paragraph of text.
So your social profiles are no longer just there to keep up appearances. They’re a storefront that turns up at the exact moment someone is deciding whether to buy, and what they find, or don’t find, shapes that decision.
Why this should worry you a little
This matters more than a passing trend. The old customer journey was roughly linear: hear about a business, Google it, visit the website, decide. Today, that journey is scattered across platforms, and a big share of it happens before anyone reaches your website at all.
Roughly half of UK adults now use social media to research products and businesses before they buy. They compare options, read opinions and form a first impression in the feed. If your business doesn’t show up there, or shows up looking neglected, with an out-of-date profile and nothing posted recently, you’ve lost the customer before you even knew they were looking. Nothing shows up in your website analytics to warn you. The loss is invisible, which is what makes it dangerous.
What people are actually searching for
Knowing the kinds of searches happening is the key to being found. On social, people tend to be looking for:
- Discovery: “coffee near me”, “wedding venues in [area]”, browsing for options they didn’t know existed.
- Comparison: weighing two businesses or products against each other before committing.
- Proof: reviews, real customer experiences, evidence that you’re trustworthy and that you actually deliver.
- How-to: practical answers to specific problems, which is often how a business first earns a stranger’s attention.
Notice that most of these come from someone who’s close to a decision. Being the business that answers the question well, right at that moment, is worth far more than a passive impression.
How to actually be findable
The good news is that social search rewards clarity over polish, which puts smaller businesses on a level footing with bigger ones. A few things that genuinely help you show up:
- Put keywords in your profile name field, not just your handle. Platforms read that field heavily. A name like “Bloom & Co | Florist in Manchester” will surface for relevant searches in a way that “Bloom & Co” on its own never will. Spell out what you do and where you do it.
- Write captions in plain buyer language. Drop the clever wordplay and the internal jargon. Use the words your customers actually type: the questions they ask, the problems they have, the place they’re in. The platform can only match you to a search if your words match theirs.
- Make content that answers specific questions. “How long does X take?”, “What’s the difference between Y and Z?”, “Is this worth it?” Posts that solve a clear problem get shown to the people asking that very thing, and they make you look like the expert while they’re at it.
- Add on-screen text and captions to your videos. Platforms read the words in and on a video. A great clip with no text is much harder to surface than one that spells out its topic clearly.
- Stay consistent and current. A profile that’s sat untouched for months reads as “closed” to a searcher. Regular, recent activity tells the algorithm and the customer that you’re open for business and worth choosing.
The double win you might not have noticed
There’s a second reason to get this right, and it’s only becoming more important. The same clear, keyword-led, genuinely helpful content that gets you found by people searching social is the content that gets picked up by AI too: the assistants and answer engines more and more buyers now use to draw up a shortlist for them.
Get found by people the way they search today, and you’re set up for the way everyone will search tomorrow. Vague brand fluff does nothing for either audience. Clear, useful content works for both.
How we approach it
Getting found on social isn’t a matter of gaming an algorithm. It’s about knowing what your particular customers search for and making sure you’re the clear, credible answer when they do. That’s the work we do. We research the language your audience actually uses, build your profiles and content around those high-value searches, and keep it all current so you turn up at the moment of decision rather than after it.
Done properly, it turns your social presence from a noticeboard into something closer to a discovery engine, one that brings you customers who were already looking for what you offer.
The bottom line
Your customers’ habits have already changed. They’re searching in places your business might not have thought to show up, and making decisions in the feed long before they reach your website. Being invisible there isn’t a neutral position. It’s a slow, silent leak of people who would have chosen you if only they’d found you.
The businesses winning in 2026 aren’t always the loudest. They’re the easiest to find: the ones who turn up clearly and credibly the moment someone goes looking.
It comes down to one question, and the answer isn’t always comfortable: when your next customer searches, can they find you?
If you’re not sure how your business shows up when people search social, or whether you show up at all, we’re happy to take a look and tell you straight. No sales spiel, just a clear picture of where you stand and what would make the biggest difference.
Get in touch, and we’ll take it from there.
