What does social search actually mean?
It means the search bar inside a social app being used as a search engine. Someone types Leeds plumber, roof repair near me or best coffee Chapel Allerton into TikTok, Instagram or YouTube and gets videos, posts and accounts back, ranked by the platform’s own idea of relevance. The searcher wants to see the thing before ringing about it: the finished job, the person who will turn up, the inside of the place. Google gives them a list. Social search gives them proof.
Who uses social search, and for what?
Younger customers most of all, and anyone buying something visual or personal. Google’s own executives have said publicly that many younger people go to TikTok or Instagram first for some kinds of search, and the pattern shows in the Leeds businesses that sell to that age group: food, fitness, beauty, homes and events. For trades and B2B the numbers are smaller but the checking habit is the same. A homeowner who found a builder on Google will look for the builder on Instagram before deciding, and a buyer at a housebuilder will look up a subcontractor on LinkedIn before returning the call.
Which platforms matter for a Leeds business?
The one your buyers already use, plus YouTube, because YouTube results also appear in Google. For consumer businesses that is Instagram and increasingly TikTok. For construction, property and professional services it is LinkedIn, where a search for a company name or a service brings up the company page, the people in it and what they have posted. Facebook still counts for local recommendations, where a question in a Leeds community group is a search in all but name. Being present on the right one with real work on it beats a thin profile on all five.
Jack Lunn, the Leeds main contractor, has put its effort into LinkedIn, with filmed developments and a strategy for the channel, and the marketing is now as recognisable as the family name behind it.
What shows up in a social search, and how is it ranked?
Posts and accounts whose words match the search, ranked by how people have responded to them. Each platform reads the caption, the on-screen text, the hashtags, the spoken words in a video and the location tag, then weighs watch time, saves, comments and shares. The practical lesson is that the words matter as much as the picture. A video of a kitchen fit in Roundhay with no caption is invisible to search, and the same video captioned kitchen fitters Roundhay, Leeds, with the location tagged, can be found for months. Evergreen searches reward evergreen posts, so a filmed job keeps working long after the feed has moved on.
How does a Leeds business get found in social search?
Publish real work with the words a customer would type, on the platform they use, and keep doing it. In practice that means filming and photographing jobs as they happen, writing captions that name the service and the place in plain English, tagging the location, and answering the questions people ask in the comments, because the answers are searchable too. It also means the profile itself: a bio that says what you do and where, a pinned post showing your best work, and reviews or testimonials people can see without leaving the app.
Standeven Flooring’s jobs, the M&S Food store in Pudsey among them, are filmed while the floor is going down, and that footage is cut for the website, the social posts and video search at the same time, so one visit to site feeds every place a buyer might look.
Does social search replace SEO?
No. It adds a second place to be found and a second place to be checked, and most Leeds customers still start on Google for anything they need quickly. The businesses doing well treat the two as one job: the same filmed job becomes a page on the website for Google, a YouTube video for video search, a LinkedIn or Instagram post for social search, and a photograph on the Google Business Profile for Maps. Search, social search and AI search all draw on the same evidence, which is why we produce it once and put it everywhere it counts.
