You should take TikTok seriously as a search engine, especially as its audience is growing quickly

Search engines were supposed to be steady, functional, and dominated by Google.

TikTok missed that memo: Adobe’s research shows TikTok’s role as a search engine has nearly doubled in two years, now used by close to half of all US consumers.

People use TikTok to find things, weigh options, and make real purchasing decisions.

Recipes, beauty, and restaurant recommendations lead the searches, and while Google and Reddit still edge it out for trust overall, the gap is closing fast.

If your brand isn’t showing up in TikTok’s searches, someone else’s is. Just saying.

TikTok has its own set of SEO rules, and they’re just as important as Google’s: keyword-rich captions, strong hooks, niche topics.

And the audience keeps growing: Pew Research confirms that 37% of US adults use TikTok. Among adults under 30, that figure climbs to 63%.

The numbers that should catch your eye:

• 68% of teens ages 13–17 are on the platform
• 55% of adult TikTok users say it’s a regular news source
• Only 25% of users generate 98% of all public content…

…Which means strategic creator partnerships could be quicker and more effective than building your own presence from the ground up.

TikTok’s user base seems to be compounding. And if you’re targeting younger audiences, you definitely can’t overlook this space.

Google’s still the search giant, but TikTok is making it nervous. And it doesn’t get nervous easily.

Meta’s chatbot now recommends your products, Reddit helps you find niche audiences, and more…

Meta’s chatbot has opinions about what you should buy.

Like going shopping with your Mom: The AI chatbot now recommends products directly in chat, showing US users branded carousels with pricing and retailer options.

There’s no checkout yet, but the feature already tailors recommendations to a user’s inferred location and gender.

If Meta’s chatbot favors existing advertisers, your current ad spend could soon do double duty.

Reddit is no longer a “maybe later” platform: The platform is now apparently capturing 5–20% of paid social budgets at some agencies, off the back of 75% ad revenue growth in Q4.

Subreddit-level targeting lets you reach beyond demographic into niche audiences pre-filtered by interest. If Reddit’s been on your radar but not your media plan, it might be time to move.

And about those teen bans: More than 40 regions are now exploring restrictions, but Australia’s early results tell a humbling story.

Despite platforms removing hundreds of thousands of underage accounts, teens are bypassing the bans via VPNs and age-detection workarounds.

Usage has barely budged. Your younger audiences are staying put; though the regulatory pressure on platforms to act isn’t going anywhere either.

Now is a good time to audit how your campaigns targeting younger audiences are structured, just in case the rules change faster than the technology can keep up.

How does AI actually read your content?

Kevin Indig recently looked at 1.2M ChatGPT responses to see exactly how the AI decides which sources to credit. In short, writing like novelists is out, writing like journalists is in.

The data shows a pattern so consistent it’s statistically indisputable. Intriguing…

Which sections of a text are most likely to be cited by ChatGPT? For years, articles have been designed to keep humans scrolling. I

In other words, the important bits are at the end. But ChatGPT doesn’t have time for that.

The data reveals 44% of citations come from the first 30% of the text. If you bury key features or insights in paragraph 12, the AI is 2.5x less likely to ever find them.

So, what makes ChatGPT more likely to cite chunks? Five things:

1) Definitive vs. vague language: Winning content is nearly twice as likely to use definitive language like “is defined as.”

In the world of vector databases, the word “is” acts as a high-speed bridge between a subject and its definition. Avoid fluff openers and instead start with direct, declarative statements that allow the AI to resolve a query in a single sentence.

2) Conversational writing: If you want to be the answer, you have to use the question.

Content that gets cited is twice as likely to include question marks, specifically in the headings. About 78% of these citations come from H2 tags that mirror a literal user query.

By echoing the entity, we make it incredibly easy for the AI to treat our content as the perfect response.

3) Entity richness: Standard English text usually has an entity density of about 5% to 8%. However, heavily cited text jumps to over 20%. Specificity lowers the AI’s confusion.

While generic advice feels risky, a specific namedrop is grounded and verifiable. Don’t be afraid to name names; it makes your information more authoritative.

4) Balanced sentiment: ChatGPT isn’t looking for dry, robotic facts, but it doesn’t want unhinged opinions either. The sweet spot is business-grade writing with a balanced subjectivity score.

The AI prefers sentences that state a fact and then briefly explain how it applies. Keep your writing at a college level to make it easier for the machine to extract the facts it needs.

5) Business-grade writing: The gap between what humans want and what machines need is closing. By structuring your content like a briefing, you satisfy the algorithm and the human at the same time. You don’t have to dumb things down, but you do have to be direct.

The slow reveal tactic is no longer viable. If you want your brand to be the primary source for LLMs, you have to adapt to the technical architecture of how they retrieve information.

Be helpful to the bot to be helpful to the user.

Online shopping happens more often than we think

Window shopping is still here. It is just called sofa shopping now.

It turns out, browsing is the new favorite pastime for a digital generation that treats the internet like one giant, endless mall.

A massive 58% of shoppers are browsing at least two to three times a week, proving that “just looking” is a high-frequency habit.

Another 22% of users browse once a week, meaning a staggering 80% of your audience is checking out products at least weekly while only 20% of shoppers are disciplined enough to browse once a month or less.

High-frequency browsing is the heartbeat of modern retail. Shoppers are looking for entertainment and inspiration and you need to refresh your digital storefront frequently.

For example, use “new arrival” tags or limited-time collections to give frequent browsers a reason to transition from looking to buying.

The path to purchase isn’t linear anymore. Pro subscribers get breakdowns of how consumers shop today and strategies to meet them where they are for just $349/year.

For up to 10 people in your team. Check it out.