How Google is Going to Index TikTok

What's the first thing you do when you have a question? For example, you're talking with friends and someone can't remember the name of the actor from Save the Last Dance.

You Google it. (Then you have Ice Cube stuck in your head for three days, so you Google "How to get a song out of your head")

The point is, up until now, when you wanted to find something on the internet, you Google it. Google crawls through web pages and finds the answer for you. That's what Google does. It searches web pages and links and finds the best answer on the internet.

The Problem

But here's the problem. The internet isn't just web links and pages anymore. The internet isn't even so much text anymore. Increasingly, it is videos. In fact, TikTok recently dethroned Google as the most popular domain in the world.

And Google can't crawl or index videos or pictures the way it crawls and indexes text. That's why until now if you wanted to find a video on the internet, you had to go to YouTube. Because, as part of the Google family, YouTube is the only site that Google could properly search.

All that is about to change.

How Google Has Responded

Google sees where things are going. They know that video is how people are consuming and will continue to consume information. Remember: Google's goal is to provide people with the answer they're searching for, and what people want are short videos that answer their questions.

Google has been negotiating with Byte Dance (TikTok's parent company) to get the data it needs to index videos. So far, all Google can index is the title, the description, and who made the video.

What This Means for Your Business

Since Google is indexing the title, description and profile, you had better be optimizing those so you can be found.

Actually, let's take a step back. If you're not on TikTok already,  you need to be. You can't afford not to be where your customers are.

But even if you're on TikTok, you still need to optimize those titles and descriptions for Google. Because that's how people are going to find you.

If Google comes to an agreement and is able to index TikTok videos, what will that mean for you? It means that, like any new feature, Google is going to be paying very close attention.

Short-form videos are probably going to rank high in search results. That means that your content has the potential to be seen by a lot more people.

Are you Ready?

But, as always, with great opportunity comes great competition. You'll need to make sure your videos are super high quality and that you're using the right keywords if you want to rank high in search results.

Google is finally catching up with the times and trying to index videos on other platforms besides YouTube. This could mean big things for your business - if you lay the groundwork today.

That means making sure your TikTok is optimized, not only for SEO, but for attracting and converting your customers.

Ready to learn more? Join us on February 16 for our quarterly TikTok Workshop, where I'll be sharing my favourite tips, tricks and strategies to help you grow your business using TikTok. Make sure you register here before seats fill up.