TikTok has moved well beyond its roots as a short-form video app.
It now serves as a search destination where people turn for answers, ideas, and products.
Creator Search Insights gives creators and brands a window into that behavior – highlighting trending queries, underserved topics, and real audience interests.
And the data backs up this shift: two-thirds of U.S. consumers use at least one social network for search, nearly half use several, and four of the top seven search platforms – YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok – are social.
What TikTok’s Creator Search Insights can do for you
TikTok’s Creator Search Insights tool gives creators visibility into the topics people are searching for on the platform.
Accessible by typing “Creator Search Insights” in the search bar or visiting TikTok.com/inspiration, it provides real-time insights straight from the source, including:
- Trending searches with massive volume spikes: Terms showing growth over 1,000% based on TikTok’s internal data.
- Content gaps that highlight underserved search topics: The tool specifically identifies topics with high search volume but limited content, showing opportunities for creators to fill demand.
- Search popularity trends over multiple timeframes: Users can view data across different time periods to understand whether trends are temporary spikes or show sustained interest.
- AI-generated content guidance: For each trending topic, TikTok provides specific tips and content suggestions.
- Searches by followers: For accounts with over 1,000 followers, the tool shows what the specific audience is searching for, enabling highly targeted content creation.
- One-click video prompts: Allows creators to act instantly on trending topics with suggested content frameworks.
This toolkit helps marketers align content with real user demand, and we should see this as a clear sign that TikTok is investing in search as a core experience.
The new search discovery funnel
The traditional search funnel has evolved dramatically.
Although social search was once primarily upper-funnel, the rapid growth of social commerce has turned it into a full-funnel feature.
Even so, consumer journeys tend to take winding paths through social search, with shoppers often jumping between platforms or stepping back into an earlier stage of the funnel.
Search behavior, according to eMarketer’s Social Search Usage and Trends 2025 report, reveals striking patterns in daily usage:
- Almost 40% of TikTok users conduct searches on the platform several times per day, while 73% search at least once daily – a frequency that exceeds all other platforms, including Google.
- Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook demonstrate similarly high engagement levels, with over two-thirds of users on each platform searching daily.
- TikTok reports that 25% of users input a search query within the first 30 seconds of launching the app.
Dig deeper: Short-form, big impact: What creators can teach performance marketers
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
Why you should be excited about Creator Search Insights
Creator Search Insights underscores what many marketers have long suspected: TikTok functions as a discovery engine where intent-driven searches happen at scale.
Gen Z leads this shift, with most turning to TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram for search.
In fact, Gen Z uses TikTok as their go-to search engine at roughly twice the rate of the general population – 59% versus 29%.
And even against cutting-edge AI tools, TikTok holds its ground: 58% of Gen Z search on the platform compared to 44% who use ChatGPT.
Social media has transformed how an entire generation looks for answers.
What the tool doesn’t offer (where gaps remain)
Creator Search Insights is powerful for uncovering what people are searching for on TikTok.
However, it stops short of showing how visible content actually is in those results – a critical gap for brands measuring performance.
Key limitations include:
- No absolute search volume, only relative popularity indicators.
- Limited historical data.
- No competitive visibility tracking.
- No measurement of your own content’s placement in results.
These blind spots have fueled the rise of specialized TikTok SEO tools like TokTrak.io, which track where specific videos rank for chosen search terms over time.
Used together, they complete the picture: Creator Search Insights surfaces demand, while third-party tools show who’s capturing it.
What this means for brands
Social search plays an underrated role in today’s fragmented search landscape.
Google may still dominate traditional search, but consumers now pose questions wherever they spend time online.
With the average U.S. consumer logging an hour and a half daily on social networks, platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram have become leading search destinations in their own right.
The implications span every stage of the funnel:
- TikTok’s search evolution: Once mainly a top-of-funnel tool, TikTok’s strong search functionality, combined with TikTok Shop, now drives lower-funnel action.
- Cross-platform behavior: Social search journeys rarely follow a straight line. Users bounce between discovery and consideration, often completing purchases on different platforms.
- Intent differences: As Kira Henson, director of paid social and search at Good Apple, puts it:
- “You go to Google for an answer versus you go to social search to begin your journey.”
So, where do we go from here?
Creator Search Insights reinforces TikTok’s role as a true search destination, giving marketers direct access to real-time demand signals across the customer journey.
The key is integration, not replacement.
Use the tool to spot emerging topics and language, then validate those insights against SEO platforms, Google Trends, and your own analytics.
For brands serious about TikTok visibility, specialized trackers like TokTrak.io can monitor ranking performance and close the visibility gap.
As search fragments across platforms, the winners will be brands that adapt strategically.
Creator Search Insights is only the beginning.
Dig deeper: The Fujiwhara effect on YouTube: AI, Shorts, and the rise of duplicate content
Contributing authors are invited to create content for Search Engine Land and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the search community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. Contributor was not asked to make any direct or indirect mentions of Semrush. The opinions they express are their own.
