Search strategy once meant ranking on Google. We optimized websites and invested heavily in organic visibility. Entire marketing strategies were built around capturing demand from Google search results.
But search behavior doesn’t live on a single platform. Today, people search on TikTok for recommendations, YouTube for tutorials, Reddit for honest opinions, and Amazon for product validation.
Search behavior now spans a much wider set of platforms, creating one of the most overlooked opportunities in digital marketing.
Search behavior is diversifying
Recent research from SparkToro and Datos analyzed search behavior across 41 major platforms, including traditional search engines, ecommerce platforms, social networks, AI tools, and reference sites.
The findings reinforce something many marketers are beginning to notice. Search is no longer confined to traditional search engines.
While Google still dominates search activity, a growing share of discovery now happens across a wider collection of platforms — a search universe, if you will.
The research suggests search activity is roughly distributed as follows:
Traditional search engines: ~80% of searches, with Google alone at ~73.7%
Commerce platforms (Amazon, Walmart, eBay): ~10%
Social networks: ~5.5%
AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.): ~3.2%
Consumers search directly on platforms where they expect to find the most useful answers, in the formats they prefer, rather than relying on Google to send them elsewhere.
Dig deeper: Discoverability in 2026: How digital PR and social search work together
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The industry is focused on AI and missing the bigger mainstream shift
Much of the search industry conversation today is focused on AI. Questions like:
How do I rank in ChatGPT?
How do I optimize for AI search?
Will AI replace Google?
They’re constantly being posed, debated, and answered by SEO professionals on platforms like Search Engine Land.
I want to be clear, these are important questions. But the data within this study tells a more grounded story, especially when thinking about strategy over the next 12 months.
AI search tools currently account for roughly 3.2% of search activity, per SparkToro research. That’s meaningful. It will almost certainly reshape how people search and discover information in the future.
But today, AI search is still smaller than many established discovery platforms with far broader adoption. For example:
Amazon receives more searches than ChatGPT.
YouTube receives more searches than ChatGPT.
Even Bing receives more search activity.
Yet many brands are pouring disproportionate attention into AI visibility while overlooking platforms where millions of searches are already happening every day.
Social platforms are now search engines
For many users, social platforms are now core search destinations. People look to:
TikTok for recommendations, restaurants, travel ideas, and products.
YouTube for tutorials, reviews, and problem-solving.
Reddit for honest discussions and community opinions.
Pinterest for inspiration and visual discovery.
Each platform plays a different role in the discovery journey.
PlatformWhat people search forTikTok/InstagramDiscovery and recommendationsYouTubeLearning, tutorials, and reviewsRedditReal opinions and community discussionsPinterestInspiration and planning
These platforms are more than entertainment destinations. Users head to them with real intent to find a solution to a problem, need, or desire.
Social content is now appearing directly in Google results
As users adopt social platforms for search, Google has begun aggregating and organizing information right within its SERPs. So yes, social and creator content appears directly inside Google search results.
Over the past year, Google has significantly expanded how it surfaces social content within SERPs. Search results now frequently include TikTok videos, YouTube Shorts, Reddit threads, Instagram posts, and forum discussions.
Google even partnered with platforms like Reddit to ensure that community discussions appear more prominently in search results. This means social content can now influence discovery in multiple ways:
Direct searches on social platforms.
Visibility within Google search results.
Influence within AI-generated answers.
Dig deeper: Social and UGC: The trust engines powering search everywhere
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Social content is also powering AI search
Social platforms are also important sources for AI-generated answers. AI systems rely on content that reflects real-world experiences, discussions, and opinions.
That’s why platforms such as Reddit, YouTube, Quora, forums, and creator-led content (i.e., Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts) are frequently cited in AI-generated responses.
Google’s AI Overviews often reference Reddit threads and YouTube videos.
Other AI tools regularly draw insights from community discussions, reviews, and creator content when generating answers.
This means content created for social discovery can influence visibility across multiple layers of search, including social platforms, Google search results, and AI-generated responses.
A single piece of content can now travel much further across the universe, consistently providing signals to audiences, developing a preference toward one brand over another.
The compounding discoverability effect
When brands invest in social search visibility, they unlock a powerful compounding effect. For example, a useful YouTube tutorial could:
Rank in YouTube search.
Appear in Google search results.
Be referenced in AI-generated answers.
Be shared across social platforms.
Spread through private messaging and dark social channels.
Unlike traditional website content, social content can move across platforms, dramatically expanding its reach. This creates an entirely new layer of discoverability.
And at a time when marketing budgets are under increasing scrutiny, the ability for content to generate visibility across multiple platforms makes the ROI of content strategies far more compelling.
Dig deeper: The social-to-search halo effect: Why social content drives branded search
Most brands still follow the old search playbook
Despite these shifts, most search strategies still revolve around Google SEO, paid search, website content, and AI/LLM interfaces.
Few brands have structured strategies for TikTok search optimization, YouTube search visibility, Reddit community engagement, and creator-led discovery strategies.
While Google SEO is incredibly competitive, social search remains relatively under-optimized. Brands that move early can capture visibility (presence) in spaces where demand already exists, thereby developing preference for their brand.
When brands invest in social search visibility, they aren’t just unlocking the 5.5% of searches happening directly on social platforms. They’re also influencing traditional search results, AI-generated answers, and wider discovery across the web.
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Search everywhere: A new model for discoverability
Search is more than a channel. It’s a behavior that happens across a developing and evolving search universe.
Your audience searches wherever they believe they’ll find the best answer in the most useful format — whether that’s Google, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, Amazon, Pinterest, or increasingly, AI interfaces.
Winning search today means being discoverable wherever those searches happen. The brands that win won’t be the ones that rank in just one place, even as traditional SEO remains an important part of the mix. They’ll be the ones that are discoverable wherever their audience searches.
That is the future of search. That is “search everywhere.”
Dig deeper: ‘Search everywhere’ doesn’t mean ‘be everywhere’