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Comment by firecall | Hacker News Reader

'Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan told the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference that according to Google's internal studies, "something like almost 40% of young people when they're looking for a place for lunch, they don't go to Google Maps or Search, they go to TikTok or Instagram."'

This seems like a terrible search experience though!

I just tried searching for local lunch places to me in Instagram, and the results are useless!

I'll have to try TikTok I guess, but I dont see how a platform full of short-form video is going to give me a sensible result about where to eat!

What am I missing here!?

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I just recently did a similar search, “things to do in Austin” on a bored weekend, and my go-to search platform was TikTok. I liked that the content was visual and engaging and has an authentic feel, vs my expectation that the first 100 Google results would be the same Top 10 articles of the most generic tourist traps in the city. In fact, I just did the search now and that’s exactly what I got.

Yeah, definitely that. To see pictures of the places in Google Maps or Search it takes several clicks, and I can't compare them side by side. Some are obsolete. Lots of pictures I don't care about added by business owners. Not really the best experience.

> This seems like a terrible search experience though!

I suspect IG/TikTok users are on average terrible computer users too. It's not like growing up with smartphones teaches you anything about dealing with or evaluating information systems; you're a consumer who is fed things and your success entirely depends on a small elite to feed you correctly.

> "something like almost 40% of young people when they're looking for a place for lunch, they don't go to Google Maps or Search, they go to TikTok or Instagram."

That might mean something like looking to see what restaurants friends have posted about, not necessarily searching.

This and looking at local town tags to find neat little restaurants and stuff; they’re all on Instagram for sure. My wife finds so much great local food on Instagram. Google just shows the chains and fast food garbage.

Huh, that is actually really interesting. I'm tempted to try this out!

I have tried TikTok and honestly it's perfect to find cool places to eat at or even when visiting a new city.

>I'll have to try TikTok I guess

do because you will be very surprised at how good it is

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