TikTok Search API: Features, Advantages, Cases

The influence of TikTok is difficult to overestimate. According to competent sources, the platform has more than 1 billion active users every month. Each of these users regularly watches videos.
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In addition, the resource has gone far beyond dance videos and now includes various content on various topics. Support for multiple video formats – vertical, horizontal, and square – emphasizes its adaptability and wide appeal. For companies and content makers, this social platform represents a great opportunity to move ahead and engage with the audience.
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This article provides a detailed guide on what TikTok Search API is, how it works, what advantages it has, and how it can be used in business.

What Is It and How to Get TikTok Search API

TikTok Search API allows developers to access and interact with TikTok data, paying special attention to search functions. It provides programmatic access to search for users, hashtags, videos and other content in the TikTok ecosystem. The API is designed to help companies and developers extract meaningful information from TikTok content, allowing them to create more targeted and effective marketing strategies. 
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The TikTok's Search API for publishing content offers 2 options:

• Direct publishing is a method that allows you to post to TikTok directly from your app. This includes videos, captions, and hashtags. 
• Upload – As soon as the video is uploaded via the API, you will receive a notification via the TikTok app that you have a new video to watch and post.

What Kind of Data One Can Search?

TikTok's search interface helps to extract publicly available data from the platform. Data is collected using a web scanner or user scripts that interact with TikTok APIs.
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The data may include various types of information:

• User profiles. This includes information about TikTok users, their profile name, biography, and number of subscribers.
• Demographics. This data relates to the characteristics of TikTok users, such as age, gender, location, and interests.
• Video. TikTok users' videos, including captions, likes, comments, posts and views.
• Hashtags. Keywords or phrases used to classify TikTok content. 
• Comments. Reactions to videos, including text, timestamp, and number of likes.
• Engagement metrics: Information about how users interact with existing content, such as likes, comments, posts, and views.
• Trends: Information about popular topics, plots, or styles.

Functionality

The Search API allows users to integrate TikTok content into their sites and applications. With this API, developers can embed TikTok videos, display user profiles, and search for videos by hashtags directly on their platforms. 
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The Tiktok API Search supports the following functions:

• Search by any keyword - you can use keywords to search for any keywords.
• Clear Video - Clear any video from TikTok and extract all data from it.
• Music Information - Get any music information that is used in the video.
• User Information - Get all the information related to the user.

To get TikTok Search API, register your application on the TikTok developer platform and get an access token. Below is a step-by-step guide on how to access this program.

Limits

These things one should consider from the first place before using this search program:

• The program extracts only publicly available data; it does not provide access to personal information.
• When using the TikTok API program, the rules and restrictions relevant to the TikTok platform apply.
• The Tiktok Search API does not have the function of limiting the rotation speed.
• The existing limitations or problems are mainly related to the valid rules of TikTok.

How to access the API

Any TikTok user can get an open API. But to do this, you need to register an account on the developer's website to integrate TikTok into your application. 

Here is a quick guide on how to do it:
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1. Create an account.

• First, go to the TikTok developer portal and create an account there. Click “Login” and log in to the service if you have already created an account, or click “Register”.
• Enter your email address and click “Send PIN to email”.
• Check your inbox for an automatic message sent from the TikTok platform. 
• Enter the code to verify your developer account and click Next. 
• The last step is to set a password to access your account.

2. Accept existing terms.

The next step is to read the document “Terms and Conditions for TikTok Developers”, which will appear in the next pop-up window, and click “Accept”.
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3. Connect your app.

Perform login and select “Connect a new app” on the “My Apps” tab. Type in the name of the application you want to embed on TikTok and upload its icon. Click “Start” to continue.
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4. Present the application for review.

To start working on integration, you must first send a request so that the TikTok team can review it and provide you with access to its API and software development tools.

After you have submitted your app for review, wait for the result. Since you receive approval, you will get a client key to start working on your integration.

TikTok Search API Benefits

TikTok API search provides many benefits for users. Here are the most obvious ones:

• Increases user engagement for your platform
  When your content is unique and exciting, it becomes more attractive. Adding the TikTok search API to your platform or app lets users interact with your content.
• Expands your existing audience
  TikTok is a brilliant platform if you are looking for new customers. Searching for videos using text search or tags makes it easier to discover what you need.
• Promotes your brand
  Searching via the TikTok API can make your brand more recognizable in the media space. For example, you can redirect traffic from TikTok to another social network - Instagram or YouTube. This way more people will know about your product.

TikTok API Languages

To take advantage of the API functionality on TikTok, developers use several programming languages to collect data about users, trends, and hashtags. This way they can add scrolling features to the most popular videos and social media sharing buttons posted on the most relevant pages of the app. Let's take a look at some of the most commonly used languages:

• Java
  It is one of the most popular programming languages in the world. Java is very useful for searching data and creating various apps, both for mobile devices and desktop computers.
• Python
  When you type the query “TikTok API” into Google, Python appears in most search results. It is easy for developers to collect information from TikTok using Python for multiple endpoints.
• Node.js
  Node.js is a popular open-source version of Javascript that many developers use to take advantage of the TikTok Search API. The version node.js has several formats, including collecting the number of user subscribers and getting tags of the most popular videos.

Analysis of Trends and User Behavior on TikTok - Popular Examples

Here are some examples of user behavior analysis on TikTok:

• Engagement is one of the most important indicators in social media analytics. You can use it to see the audience's reaction to the content.
• Content Analytics — in the Content section, you can see which videos have become the most popular on your account in the last 7 days.
• Subscriber Analytics — On the Subscribers tab, you can see the change in the number of subscribers over time.
• Analytics of an individual video — with its help, you will find out how long viewers watched your video, the total number of views of the received video, the average time it was viewed, and additional information about audience attendance.

TikTok API Search Alternatives 

The official TikTok API is not the only tool for data search. Today, there are different third-party solutions to achieve the same result.
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If you are looking for a reliable solution to get TikTok Search API features, take a closer look at the Data365 Social Media API. Our company works with modern social media platforms providing similar Search API services for companies interested in data extraction.
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Thanks to our product, customers receive such benefits: 

• Access to data of any amount thanks to our automatically scalable infrastructure. 
• No restrictions on access to data, unlike the official API services. 
• Access to real-time data that is absolutely relevant and new. You will be able to determine which data should be retrieved and how often to do it.
• The ability to extract data from four of the most popular social media platforms in one place. 

Our clients are:

• Cybersecurity companies
• Software Development Agencies
• Enterprises focused on artificial intelligence
• Marketing departments of major brands
• Firms engaged in listening on social networks and brand monitoring
• Universities and individual researchers

Conclusion

The TikTok Search API allows developers to programmatically interact with a given platform and access its functions and data. These include user authentication, content downloads, video playback, user engagement metrics, and more. For a deeper understanding of how it works, we recommend reading our article TikTok scraping: how to make this social network data working for you.
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If you need an alternative tool with similar capabilities, contact Data365 support team to get detailed information on how our solution can be useful for your project. Join our ecosystem! Enjoy the same complete data that you could get with a professional package of proprietary social media APIs.