TikTok is a search engine. Your brand isn't in it.
A majority of Gen-Z now begins product research inside a social app. The algorithms started rewarding SEO-shaped signals. Most brands still publish for the scroll and ignore the search.
The search box migrated into the feed. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest all quietly became discovery engines, and the algorithms started rewarding query-matched captions, categorized titles, and the on-platform SEO signals that make content surfaceable to intent — not just interest.
The published-for-the-scroll era is over. Content that isn't legible to the platform's own search box is invisible to the audience that would have found it via search.
How Share of Discovery is measured
Monitor the twenty queries that matter in your category, on each platform, weekly. Count your brand's appearances. Contextualise by which of your posts the algorithm is surfacing, and iterate on the signals — caption keyword density, hashtag structure, on-platform authority — until the trend line bends.