By Long known as the app preteens and teenagers used to make annoying dance videos, TikTok has been growing and maturing a lot lately even in the face of the US Government potentially closing down the app. I’ve heard from a wide array of small business owners about how a handful of TikTok videos have helped their business grow over the past few years as more and more adults find the app a useful place to mindlessly scroll and make content of their own.
Now it appears TikTok is on a path to becoming the top source for local discovery waging a war against Yelp and Google.
BrightLocal, a local SEO vendor based in Brighton, UK, discovered that TikTok appears to be building out profiles for locations, pulling reviews in from Google Maps (Google Business Profiles / formerly Google My Business), and allowing users to leave reviews of their own.
TikTok is not the first social media app / platform to dive into local discovery. Facebook made a huge push for this market a decade ago before largely abandoning their ambitions, Foursquare turned a game of check-ins into a local marketing machine, and of course there’s Instagram.
I've just seen this on TikTok—reviews and location data pulled from Google.⭐️
When you click into tagged locations on videos, or search via Places, it shows their Google reviews, with functionality to leave a review on TikTok.
Plus, listings data also shown on some places. pic.twitter.com/Mldafvhfm6
— BrightLocal 🇺🇦 (@brightlocal) December 5, 2024
So far the profiles and reviews only appear on the Mobile App version of TikTok and not the website version. We’ve also been unable to replicate BrightLocal’s claims that users can leave reviews on TikTok directly for a location but have found evidence for this inside of TikTok’s review section (see screenshot below), and found many locations do not have reviews being imported. However, based on TikTok’s growth and focus on improving advertising, it would make sense for them to offer more in-depth local discovery tools such as on-platform reviews and collected videos about a location. This would provide more real estate for reviews and likely most importantly more user data for advertisers to run ads against.
One big industry we’ve noted does not have reviews on TikTok would be SEO Agencies. While agencies like ours, WrightIMC, Sterling Sky, and Screaming Frog have active Google Business profiles with reviews, either the profiles are not populated on TikTok or the reviews are not populated on the profile.
You can find our agency’s profile on TikTok by searching on the app for “Joe Youngblood SEO & Digital Marketing Consulting” then tapping on the “Places” tab. You can see profiles not appearing on TikTok.com via a custom Google Search operator. This link shows a search for our agency on TikTok which turns up empty: https://bit.ly/joeyoungbloodseobusinessprofiletiktoksearch
In the case of Screaming Frog over in the UK TikTok also shows a bunch of unrelated videos to their business based on the sound “screaming frog” used on those videos.
For large stores such as IKEA TikTok is not currently importing all of their Google reviews for each profile. The Dallas store located at 1000 Ikea Way currently has 8,313 reviews on Google. TikTok claims there is only 1 TikTok-based review and displays only a total of 5 reviews for the location – all imported from Google.
It seems clear this is not a finished product and we’ll likely see more improvement with the system over time. There is a chance that all TikTok wants to do is pull in Google reviews for locations people are making videos about the platform, there’s equally as good of a chance that this is the tip of the spear and TikTok sees an opening to supplant at least Yelp in terms of local discovery. If the former is the case then TikTok is a stronger local marketing tool especially for restaurants and experiential focused businesses. If the later is the case then TikTok is suddenly going to come into play for Local SEO.
What to look for
As the local discovery component of TikTok is built out here is what we will be looking for:
- Local profiles appearing on the web-based version of TikTok
- Local profiles indexable by search engines
- TikTok gathering on-platform reviews via their app (i.e. not only importing Google reviews)
- TikTok recommending users who engage with a location and/or make videos about a location leave reviews
If at least 3 of the above 4 items come to fruition, then TikTok will start serving a double benefit as a local SEO ranking signal.
The “Good to Know” information panel shown above is a great sign that TikTok is now in some areas or soon will be gathering reviews for locations.
Getting Started with TikTok
We are not currently a TikTok agency, however, making TikTok videos appears relatively easy. Here are some tips we gleaned from talking to TikTok video experts.
1. If you have a product / service that can be demonstrated, do a demonstration video or series of videos. Even if you find the subject matter boring, others on TikTok might enjoy the videos.
2. Try making at least one “workspace tour” video for your TikTok. Simple and effective these videos show off your store / factory / workspace to the public.
3. See if you can get a customer to make a testimonial video for you to post on your TikTok.
4. Make a “Day in the Life Of” video about your industry or have your staff make a video like this.
5. Give out tips and advice about your product / service or related things.
6. Take a stab at making a joke about your product / service / industry. TikTok loves a good video meme.
7. Ask your customers / audience to make videos and feature them on your channel.
8. Lastly, avoid making corny dance / trend videos. TikTokers don’t appear to mind corny dance videos but they do mind when it comes off inauthentic like an elderly politician or a doctor doing a TikTok trend.