Search Everywhere Optimization: the outdoor business guide to showing up on every platform

Your customers don’t just search on Google. They type questions into YouTube and watch videos before deciding if a trip is worth booking. They scroll TikTok and discover a zip-line park they didn’t know existed. They read Reddit threads written by people who did the exact rafting trip last summer. They ask ChatGPT to suggest fly fishing guides in a specific region.

Search isn’t one place anymore. And if your outdoor business only shows up in one place, you’re invisible to a growing share of the people who would pay to book with you.

This isn’t about spreading yourself thin across every platform on the internet. It’s about understanding where your customers actually look, and making sure you show up where it matters for your specific business. That’s the core idea behind search everywhere optimization: building visibility across the search surfaces your customers use, not just the one you learned about first.

Why this matters more for outdoor businesses

There’s a reason this shift hits outdoor operators harder than other industries. What you’re selling is inherently visual and experiential.

When someone is deciding between two hotels, they can compare star ratings and check-in times. When someone is deciding whether to book a multi-day rafting trip or a fly fishing float in September, they want to see the water. They want to hear from someone who actually did it. They want a 30-second clip that tells them whether this experience is the kind of thing they’re after.

Google can deliver a page-one result. But it takes YouTube to show someone what the Salmon River looks like in August. It takes Reddit to surface a firsthand account from someone who went last fall with a beginner in their group. It takes TikTok to make someone who wasn’t thinking about a fishing trip start thinking about one.

Social media platforms, primarily YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, now collectively drive over 60% of product discovery. Google accounts for about 34.5% of total search share in that same picture. That’s a real change from five years ago, and it’s more pronounced in outdoor recreation and travel where the decision is emotional and visual before it becomes a booking.

Forty-one percent of people under 30 go to social platforms first when searching for information online. Among that same group, 49% cite TikTok as their top channel for product discovery. These aren’t abstractions. They’re the people planning their next outdoor trip.

Where each platform actually fits

Not every platform is the same kind of search. Before you try to optimize across all of them, it helps to understand what each one is doing at each stage of the planning process, because putting the right content on the right platform matters more than just being present.

Google is where people go when they’re ready to act. “Guided rafting trips Ocoee River,” “fly fishing guides Montana in September,” “campgrounds near Moab with full hookups.” These are buying queries. The person typing them has already decided they want to do something; they’re now selecting who to do it with. Google SEO captures late-stage intent. That’s why ranking for the right terms before your season starts carries so much weight.

YouTube is where people go to see before they commit. It’s the second-largest search engine in the world, and about 31% of people consult YouTube to validate a purchase decision before making it. For outdoor businesses, this maps directly to how people vet trips: they want to see the rapids, see the trail, see what kind of day they’d actually be buying. A three-minute video of your most popular experience does persuasion work that a well-written webpage can’t fully replicate.

Reddit is where people go to get unfiltered accounts from strangers. Around 18% of people use Reddit for research, ahead of Facebook for that purpose. Google started surfacing Reddit threads much more prominently in 2024 after a content licensing deal, so when someone searches “is X outfitter good” or “best beginner rafting companies in the New River Gorge,” a Reddit thread is now likely sitting in the top ten results. What actual customers say about you in those threads is part of your search presence whether you pay attention to it or not.

TikTok is where people discover things they weren’t looking for. It’s not primarily a search tool. It’s a discovery tool that sometimes functions like search. Someone scrolls a POV video from a heli-ski run and starts Googling heli-ski packages that night. Someone sees a 45-second trail ride clip and texts their partner about an anniversary trip. TikTok builds awareness upstream of intent and feeds searches that eventually land on Google.

Pinterest is quieter but worth understanding. About 96% of top Pinterest searches are unbranded, which means people search for experiences, not companies. “Horseback riding trails Wyoming.” “Whitewater rafting family trip.” “Fly fishing river vacation.” They’re in discovery mode, not brand-comparison mode. Outdoor businesses with strong visual content can show up here for people who don’t yet know to look for them specifically.

AI search, meaning ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, is where more decisions are starting to happen at the shortlisting stage. About 15 million U.S. adults used generative AI as their primary search tool in 2024, a number projected to reach 36 million by 2028. Google AI Overviews appear on roughly 57% of local search queries. The businesses that get cited in AI answers tend to share certain characteristics: clear structured service information, real pricing, strong review profiles, and complete business listings. We’ve covered how AI search works for outdoor businesses in more detail here.

The one thing all these platforms share

Here’s what makes this workable for a small outdoor business: the underlying quality of your content travels across platforms.

A well-written trip page with specific details about the experience (what guests will see, what they should bring, what the difficulty level actually means in practice, what the day looks like start to finish) will help you on Google, help AI systems cite you, and give you raw material to pull from for YouTube scripts, Reddit answers, and social posts.

The outdoor businesses that show up across multiple platforms aren’t running six separate content strategies. They’re creating good core content about their experiences and distributing it across platforms in the formats those platforms reward.

Write the detailed trip guide. That’s the foundation. Pull a short video from a trip day. Answer Reddit questions using the same knowledge that went into the guide. Lift the FAQ section into your Google Business Profile’s Q&A. Pin the best photos to Pinterest boards organized by experience type. Post a clip of something interesting to TikTok. The underlying substance stays the same. What changes is format and platform.

The thing that often gets missed in conversations about multi-platform visibility is this: it’s not about creating more content. It’s about getting more out of the content and knowledge you already have.

Building your google foundation first

Even with everything shifting, Google is still where the booking intent lives. Organic search drives about 53% of trackable web traffic. Nothing else comes close.

Your Google foundation needs to be solid before you branch out. It’s the most direct path to bookings, and good Google SEO creates the structured content that feeds AI answers, review platforms, and other search surfaces anyway.

Service pages need specific, concrete information. Not taglines or brand voice. Trip names, duration, difficulty ratings, price range, age minimums, what gear is included. The kind of sentences that a person, or an AI system, can extract and restate confidently. “Half-day rafting on the Nantahala River, Class II-III, all safety gear provided, $75 per person, ages 7 and up, two departures daily at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.” That sentence earns citations. Generic enthusiasm doesn’t.

A Google Business Profile that’s actually filled out does more work than most operators give it credit for. Recent photos, responses to reviews, a Q&A section with questions you’ve posted and answered yourself, correct hours by season, every applicable service category selected. The profile feeds Google Maps rankings, it feeds AI Overviews, and it’s the first thing many people see when they search your business name. An incomplete profile is an underinvestment in your most visible piece of real estate.

Publishing content that answers questions from earlier in the planning process also expands your Google footprint without competing for your primary booking terms. “Best time to fish the [River],” “what to expect on a first whitewater trip,” “is guided fly fishing worth the cost.” These aren’t buying queries, but they reach people while they’re still deciding whether to go at all. Being there for those conversations matters.

What to actually do on youtube, reddit, and tiktok

On YouTube, you don’t need a camera operator and an editing suite. You need searchable content that shows what an experience looks like and answers the questions people type in before booking.

Start with the most common question you field from first-time customers. Film a short, honest answer. “What to expect on your first rafting trip.” “Is guided fishing worth it? What you actually get for the money.” “What a pack trip to the backcountry looks like.” These are the videos that show up when people are in the YouTube research phase, and they’re the ones that build real pre-purchase confidence.

Title the video with the terms people search. Write a description that includes the location, the experience type, and what the viewer will learn or see. YouTube’s search algorithm is more forgiving than Google’s. Title and description do most of the work.

Two or three well-titled videos that answer real pre-trip questions will generate visibility for years. That’s a more useful investment than a weekly posting schedule built around content without clear search purpose.

On Reddit, the most useful thing you can do is be actually helpful in conversations you didn’t start.

Find the subreddits where your potential customers are already talking: r/whitewater, r/flyfishing, r/camping, r/nationalparks, plus whatever state or regional subreddits cover your geography. When someone asks “looking for rafting guides in X area, who should I book?” answer honestly and with specific information. Not a pitch. Information.

If your company comes up in a thread, respond. If someone asks a question that falls in your area of expertise, answer it well enough that it helps even if they don’t ultimately book with you. Over time this builds your presence in the conversations Google is surfacing in its top results. It also builds the kind of reputation that Reddit captures, the kind potential customers are specifically looking for when they search your company name.

Reddit’s culture rejects obvious self-promotion, sometimes loudly. Being the knowledgeable local operator in a conversation is very different from being the advertiser. The former earns trust. The latter gets ignored.

If you run an outdoor business with any kind of visually compelling experience (and nearly all of them are), TikTok and Pinterest are worth at least a modest investment of time.

POV footage from a trip. What the river looks like at peak flow. The moment a cutthroat trout hits the dry fly. The view from the ridge after a hard climb. These are quick to produce if you have a phone, and they travel well on TikTok because they show something real that people actually want to see.

The goal on TikTok isn’t direct conversion. It’s building awareness before someone has even started actively planning. The person who sees your river video on a Tuesday night in January might book a summer trip in March. TikTok planted the seed; Google and your booking page closed it. The platforms work together.

Pinterest works differently. Create boards organized around the experience or destination. “Wyoming mountain horseback riding,” not your business name. Pin your best photos with descriptions that include the location, the season, and who the experience is for. Pinterest’s search is almost entirely unbranded, which means you’re competing on image quality and relevance rather than name recognition. For a small outfitter, that’s actually a leveled field.

How to prioritize without burning out

The risk with “search everywhere” as a concept is that it sounds like you need to become a full-time content creator on six platforms at once. That’s not the right read.

The operators who do this well aren’t running six separate content programs. They’re creating good core content about their experiences (detailed trip guides, honest FAQs, well-shot video) and then putting versions of it where their specific customers look.

A useful starting point: figure out which two platforms, besides Google, your actual customers are most likely to use when they’re in the early stages of planning. For a fly fishing guide, YouTube and Reddit are probably the right pair. For a zip-line park targeting families with teenagers, TikTok and a complete Google Business Profile might do more work. For a guest ranch targeting long-haul vacation planners, Pinterest and AI citation optimization might be the better investment.

You don’t need to be everywhere. You need to be where your specific customers look, and you need to show up there in the format that platform rewards. That’s a more tractable problem than it sounds.

What actually moves the needle

A few things matter more than everything else when you’re trying to build visibility across platforms.

Specificity beats volume. One detailed, accurate, well-organized trip page does more across Google, AI search, and YouTube description boxes than ten generic “book a trip today” pages. Write about what the experience actually is. Include the details that make someone confident they know what they’re signing up for.

Real reviews contain the language AI systems and future customers trust. A review that says “the guide knew every fishing hole on the South Fork and put us on cutthroat all morning” is more useful than five stars with no text. That review feeds AI answers, shows up in Google results, and convinces future customers of the same thing the reviewer experienced. How you generate and respond to reviews compounds over time in ways that a one-time effort can’t.

Consistency across platforms matters for trust. When your name, phone number, address, and description match across your website, Google Business Profile, TripAdvisor, Yelp, and anywhere else you’re listed, you build a coherent presence that search systems and customers can rely on. Inconsistencies create doubt in both.

The content that serves you best across all these platforms tends to be the same: clear, specific, honest, organized around what a customer actually needs to know. You’re not optimizing for platforms. You’re giving potential customers the information they need, in the places they’re looking for it.

Google’s dominance in purchase-intent search isn’t going away. But the path from “I wonder what kind of outdoor trip I should do this year” to “I’m ready to book” now passes through more stops than it used to. The outdoor businesses that stay visible along that whole path are the ones that fill seasons.