TikTok Search Ads with Smart+: how they work and how to compare to Google

TikTok Search Ads is TikTok's search campaign: you choose keywords and your ad appears on the search results page when someone searches inside the app. On October 5, 2026, TikTok announced the campaign now runs on Smart+, its automation layer, which handles keywords, bidding and search budget. According to TikTok, it supports Traffic, Sales, Lead Generation and App Promotion, and it is available in the US and in testing in other markets. To compare it with Google Search, compare results on the same objective and revenue in your CRM, never CPC against CPC.

How TikTok's search campaign works

TikTok's help center describes the Search Ads Campaign as a campaign that uses keywords to reach people searching for specific terms. Ads show only on the search results page, and the exact position varies with relevance and platform experiments.

What to know before you build one:

• Its own creation flow. Budget, keywords and creative are set per campaign, and it can run without other active ads in the account.
• Formats. Spark Ads (a boosted organic post) and carousel image ads.
• Counting. A video that autoplays counts as both an impression and a video view. An image counts only as an impression.

What Smart+ changes in search

Per TikTok's For Business blog, the Smart+ version brings three automations together:

The 20-to-1 guidance comes from TikTok itself: with a US$ 1.50 bid, for example, the suggested budget is US$ 30 a day. Below that, keywords tend to lose auctions.

The part to watch is automated keywords. Like broad match on Google, it brings in searches you did not pick. Great for discovering terms; risky if nobody reads the report.

Negatives and the search terms report

TikTok's help center documents what you need to keep search clean:

• Three match types for negatives: broad (blocks a search containing all the words, in any order), phrase (the words in that order) and exact (only the identical search).
• Three levels: account (up to 1,000 negatives, all broad), campaign and ad group.
• Variants are not automatic. Plurals and misspellings need their own negative; capitalization does not.
• Search terms report. Shows the searches that actually triggered your ads. It is your source for negatives and for new keywords.

Two limitations so you do not panic: search campaign metrics arrive with roughly 8 hours of latency, and low-converting terms are not shown individually, which can make the total differ from the sum of the rows.

The review routine is the same as on Google. If you already do it there, Google Ads search terms and negative keywords with AI work as a playbook.

Why TikTok search is not Google search

TikTok says 57% of its US users use the app's search (TikTok's own internal data, from 2024). But what people search for is different. On Google, searches tend to come from people ready to buy or solve something: "price," "near me," "quote." On TikTok, discovery and proof weigh more: "how to use," "is it worth it," "review," "before and after."

That changes your keyword list. Pasting your full Google list into TikTok usually means low volume on bottom-of-funnel terms and missing the searches TikTok has plenty of.

A practical way to build the first list: take your best-selling product or service and write the searches someone would type on TikTok before buying it. Start with "how to," "best," "review," "vs" and "worth it" combined with the product name, then add your brand. Keep ad groups tight, one theme each, so the search terms report stays readable. Broad themes mixed in one ad group make it impossible to tell which idea is actually working.

How to compare with Google Search without mixing metrics

The most common mistake is putting both campaigns in one table and comparing CPC and CTR. It does not work, for four reasons:

What does compare:

1. Cost per result on the same objective. Leads with leads, purchases with purchases, same period.
2. Revenue by channel in the CRM. With UTMs on your ads, the CRM tells you what each search channel sold, without either platform's ruler.
3. Overlap. Before adding both platforms' conversions together, remember the same person may have searched in both places. See when Google and Meta claim the same lead; with TikTok the logic is identical.

Window differences are explained in attribution window, and how TikTok's creative drives results in TikTok ads creatives.

Checklist for your first test

• The search campaign option shows up in your TikTok Ads Manager
• A starting keyword list built for TikTok search, not copied from Google
• A daily budget of at least 20 times your bid
• Negatives for terms unrelated to your offer already in the account
• The search terms report reviewed every week
• UTMs on your ads so you can read revenue in the CRM

Next step

If the search campaign already shows up in your account, start small, with a TikTok-specific list and the 20-to-1 rule, and only turn on automated keywords after two weeks of search terms data. If it does not show up yet, build the list and negatives now. To put TikTok, Google and Meta in the same conversation with AI, see the Vazante connector for Claude.