Our Guide To Social Search Optimization (SSO) In 2026
- by Luke Thiessen
The landscape of online search is fracturing, and while AI chatbots get most of the credit for stealing traffic away from traditional engines, I believe us marketers should be paying more attention to social search.
Some experts report that Google is now handling just 27% of all online searches, while the rest are happening on social media and AI platforms. Broadly speaking, AI chatbots are eating up more of the remainder, but there is also a significant generational divide.
According to surveys by Sprout Social, Gen Z prefers social media for online search over AI or traditional search engines, with 41% choosing social search. And those numbers grow even higher when you look at Gen Z users searching specifically for brands and product discovery.
So, if young consumers are skipping Google and increasingly looking for brands and products on social media, how do you make sure they find you? Let’s look at the basics of social search optimization (or SSO) and how to best harness that for your brand in 2026.
Keyword and phrase research
On TikTok and Instagram, you can glean a lot of information by trying out the search bar yourself.
Try typing in a few key words relating to your brand, like the product or service category, your city or location, or anything that relates strongly to your business. Then watch and see what the platform suggests to auto-complete your search. These will be some of the most common search terms people are already using on the platform, making them a good place to start.
Another angle on this is to find popular and viral videos within your niche – like video reviews of similar products, unboxing or how-to videos – and look at the suggested search links underneath. These are search terms the platform is suggesting based on categories it’s already assigned to that video or content, which can be useful in understanding how the algorithm labels or “thinks about” your products or niche industry.
Optimizing your content
Social media algorithms have gotten pretty advanced, especially when it comes to video. It’s not just about your caption anymore (although that is still important!). Now, boosted by AI, these algorithms are listening to your audio and reading text within your video and images to determine what your content is about.
Optimizing your content for the algorithms now means using your keywords and key phrases in all of these places, and doing so in a way that the AI can understand. Make sure your keywords are clearly spoken aloud in the first few seconds of your videos, and put them in easy-to-read text in that beginning section as well. Same goes for your captions, which should include your keywords and phrases as close to the beginning as possible.
Optimizing your bio
When it comes to Social Search Optimization, the algorithms are also looking at your bio for clues about your content and authority.
This means putting relevant keywords in your bio to improve the searchability of both your profile and your content. Aim for a few major keywords along with whatever else you want to say here.
You should also be putting keywords in your username. You’ve probably seen examples of this in certain industries where they figured this out early – personal trainers and fitness influencers, freelance marketers, business and finance consultants – where a username will include both an actual name and a short description of what they do.
This can be tricky, depending on your business and name, but try to include a couple of keywords or one short phrase; something that will capture what most people searching for your type of business might include in a query. For example: “Revolver Coffee | Gastown, Vancouver” or “John Smith | Winnipeg Commercial Real Estate”.
Optimizing your engagement
This is the trickiest part, because you can’t control the behaviour of your followers or other users on social media, but creating content that drives certain types of engagement can also help your SSO.
All engagement is good engagement, and will help the overall searchability of your content. However, the best types of engagement are saves, shares and comments. Try to create and format your content in such a way that it encourages one or more of these behaviours. Having useful information in your content can lead to more post saves and shares, while asking questions or specifically requesting some kind of feedback can lead to more comments – and with comments, the longer and more specific the better.
We can help
Social media strategy and content creation are our bread and butter. It can be daunting and time-consuming to do this work on your own.
At Starling Social, we help brands and nonprofits of all sizes develop social media strategies and run accounts day-to-day using a combination of solid best practices and sharp creativity. We also offer one-time audits which can help get you moving in the right direction with minimal commitment.
Get in touch today to book a free discovery call – we would love to help you navigate this world and get more out of your social media and digital marketing.
