For years, the world of online search was dominated by a single, monolithic behavior: users went to a dedicated search engine to find answers to their questions. In 2025, this behavior has fundamentally fractured. A new generation of digital natives is increasingly turning to social media platforms not just for entertainment, but as their primary search engine. This shift, known as social search, is changing the way we discover information, products, and ideas, and it has profound implications for how content must be created and tagged.
Instead of typing a query into a traditional search bar, a user looking for a new restaurant might now open a short-form video app and search for “best pasta in my city.” They are not looking for a webpage with a list of reviews; they are looking for authentic, visual, and user-generated video content that shows them the experience. Similarly, someone looking for a product review is now just as likely to search for it on a video-sharing platform as they are on a search engine, trusting the visual evidence and community comments more than a formal review website.
This behavioral shift has made the art of the hashtag more critical and more nuanced than ever before. In the past, hashtags were often used for broad, community-building purposes. Today, they are essential for search engine optimization within the social platform. To be discoverable, creators must think like a search engine and use hashtags that match the specific queries a user might be typing.
This has led to the rise of the long-tail hashtag. Instead of using a broad, highly competitive, single-word tag, creators are now using longer, more descriptive, multi-word phrases that function like a search query. For example, instead of just using a generic tag, a food blogger would use a series of long-tail hashtags like “#howtomakeveganlasagna,” “#easyveganpastarecipe,” and “#plantbaseditaliandinner.” While these tags have a much lower search volume, they have a much higher search intent. The person searching for that specific phrase is a highly qualified and engaged viewer.
For businesses and creators, this means that every piece of content must be optimized for search. The title, the description, and the hashtags must all work together to answer a potential question or solve a specific problem. In the era of social search, content creators must think of themselves not just as entertainers, but as the new search results.
This trend of using social platforms as search engines is most pronounced among younger audiences on visually-driven platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest.