Long neglected and misunderstood by some internet users, Reddit is now omnipresent in the search results of the world’s most used search engine. Why this sudden visibility?
It took more than 10 years, but Reddit has now managed to monetize its users’ posts more effectively than a content farm. In the mid-2010s, in the wake of BuzzFeed, multiple infotainment sites emerged on the web to flood our news feeds with “unusual articles produced in a few minutes. ” The modus operandi was always the same, divided into four stages, the second of which may surprise you: a dubious piece of information or a “LOL” or “WTF” video unearthed in the depths of the web, a few hastily written lines, a clickbait title and visual, and an effective hook on Facebook.
Journalists and editors, often paid peanuts by these ephemeral sites, have not forgotten: to unearth the information that would make the Internet user react or the video that could circulate on the web, one platform was particularly prized, because it naturally promoted the topics with interest thanks to an upvote system. This gold mine was Reddit, which, however, categorically refused to fill its pockets at the expense of its users. “Reddit is a product of 1998 that is trying to adopt a 1998 economic model,” almost despaired, at the time, a social media expert interviewed by the New York Times.
Currently, others may be benefiting more from Reddit’s content than the platform itself. BuzzFeed’s team regularly crawls Reddit for popular photos and memes, which it then turns into viral “listicles.” With 130 million monthly visitors, BuzzFeed’s audience exceeds Reddit’s, according to the New York Times.
The special partner of AI leaders
But the situation has changed. More than a decade later, “the homepage of the internet” has lost its archaic design, as well as some of its charm, but has definitely learned to monetize user-generated content. In February 2024, the platform entered into a partnership with Google, allowing it to use forum content to train its generative AI models, in exchange for an annual compensation of $60 million. Three months later, it was OpenAI’s turn to gain access to Reddit’s API, in order to integrate its content “into ChatGPT as well as new products,” detailed a press release.
The theory of the paid deal in visibility
Coincidence or chance, the huge discussion forum born in 2005 has also been enjoying, for several months, a rather indecent visibility on the world’s most popular search engine. Enough to fuel “certain conspiracy theories” about a possible link with the agreement signed in February, explained a Business Insider article. In addition to the 60 million annual revenue, had Google paid Reddit for visibility, a few weeks before its IPO?
The numbers can indeed be striking, especially for a site that has, until now, relied primarily on direct traffic. In January 2025, Reddit recorded more than 6 billion visits, more than 55% of which came from Google, according to Semrush data, compared to 18% in 2018. In the United States, where Reddit is widely visited, the increase is particularly palpable, to the point of annoying some publishers or SEO experts. “No site has gained so much organic visibility so quickly in at least five years,” a Sistrix marketing manager estimated to Business Insider. A recent example illustrates this quite well: in February 2024, an article published by HouseFresh, an independent publisher, which denounced the excessive emphasis on major media and Reddit on Google, to the detriment of smaller players, was supplanted… by a topic-sharing article on r/Google.
The yellow jersey of the visibility index
But in France, too, signs of the collaboration between Reddit and Google are increasingly visible. In 2024, with “a phenomenal growth of 1,031%,” Reddit recorded the second-highest improvement in SEO visibility, according to Sistrix. During the year, the platform recorded “15,286 improvements in SERP positions,” while increasing its visibility index by 104 points.
In just one year, reddit.com has garnered impressive SERP rankings, particularly for branded queries like Instagram, Hotmail, and Roblox, thanks to its famous dedicated subreddits. But that’s not all: the platform has also moved into high-volume generic queries like “instant gaming” and “translate,” Sistrix explains.
“Over the last three months, traffic has completely exploded,” confirmed Inès Durand, solutions business manager at SimilarWeb, in an interview with BDM. “For short queries like “… Reddit”: we recorded a 160% increase in January, compared to the previous year. For long queries, the increase reached 178% over the same period. And it particularly accelerated in the second half of the year.”
In January 2024, Reddit had 38 million monthly visits in France, compared to 61 million this year, on desktop alone. I imagine you can make the same observation on the app. Organic traffic from Google jumped 84% year-on-year (YoY). That’s impressive.
Beyond Reddit, Google’s renewed interest in forums
But conspiracy theorists may be disappointed: Reddit’s dominance in search results began “before the partnership was signed,” she confirms. Since an update to its algorithm, rolled out in November 2023, Google has, it is true, begun to gradually promote user-generated content in its results, officially to adapt to the new search habits of Internet users, in search of so-called “first-hand” content and at the same time critical of “the inefficiency of the Search algorithm,” recalls Inès Durand.
To get information that’s truly tailored to your needs, nothing beats direct experience from someone who has lived it, the company justified itself in a blog post as evasive as usual.
It is this update, coupled with other gradual adjustments, which seems to have given a new organic boost to discussion forums, with a more marked impact on Reddit than on Quora, “which is falling a bit in France” after an upward phase, underlines the expert. Now, these platforms with retro architecture regularly impose themselves at the top of the results, particularly for very specific queries. “Reddit is valuable for the long tail,” she deciphers. The questions asked on the platform are often very specific and concern niche themes. And the answers often appear reliable thanks to the upvote system: the publications which generate the most engagement provide quality answers, which makes them legitimate in the eyes of Google.”
An anonymous dimension “compensated by the community effect”
Because even though Reddit is based on a way of working and an architecture from another era, it has assets that justify the attention Google is paying to it. This “last community bastion of the web”, as journalist Lucie Ronfaut described it in the columns of the daily newspaper Le Monde, brings together thousands of sub-forums (or subreddits) covering an infinite number of themes. Frequented by several hundred million users for the most popular, these subreddits are constantly updated with fresh content, personal experiences or cleverly formulated jokes.
But in theory, the platform has a weakness in the eyes of Google, which claims to value EEAT: its anonymous dimension. On the forum, which has 100 million active users per day, interaction is done under pseudonyms. This does not prevent certain topics, sometimes very detailed on sensitive subjects, such as finance or legal issues, from rising in search results, even in the absence of a rigorous fact-checking system. “What is worrying is that on Reddit, an opinion that ‘seems logical’ has a strong chance of being widely upvoted, even if it is factually inaccurate,” worried a contributor to the specialized media Search Engine Journal. Users sometimes lack the expertise necessary to differentiate a mistaken, but persuasive, idea from truly founded information.”
“On some subreddits, moderation is strict ,” says Inès Durand, citing r/conseiljuridique as an example. ” As soon as a comment relates a personal experience that is not based on legal facts, it can be deleted. The author can also be prevented from posting. A response that lacks methodology will not be highlighted .” According to the expert, the anonymous dimension is offset by the community effect. “There is a form of validation: if the post is not upvoted, it is because it is not relevant,” she says, while pointing out that a post riddled with inaccuracies or that recommends a solution that is not appropriate will inevitably generate negative engagement. “Google is able to understand all of this. It can count the number of downvotes and negative comments, and only bring up the most reliable responses.”
A new playing field for brands?
In recent months, the forum’s rise to prominence hasn’t escaped the attention of brands. While other platforms are floundering or making questionable decisions, should we invest in this “new” playing field? Yes, but with caution, believes Inès Durand: “Reddit can be used to identify consumer trends, understand user expectations, and adjust your marketing or product strategy accordingly. But it remains a safe space, where you shouldn’t interfere too much in conversations, otherwise users will migrate elsewhere. They like Reddit precisely because they can meet up with each other and get unbiased advice.”
Some brands have gone further, creating their own space. This is the case with the American mattress company Purple, which launched r/LifeOnPurple: a subreddit with nearly 5,000 members, where customers share their opinions and ask questions about products.
When creating a branded space, the goal should be clearly stated and transparent: “We are here to help you and interact with you” rather than infiltrating other subreddits, says Inès Durand.
Blizzard Entertainment, the maker of Starcraft II and Overwatch, also tried the experiment after noticing that subreddits dedicated to its games were attracting hundreds of thousands of players. The studio, now under the aegis of Activision, has notably integrated a space dedicated to customer service.
Google and Reddit, possessive dependency
It remains to be seen whether Reddit’s exposure to the world’s most used search engine will last, or whether it’s simply a phase. The company, which has just achieved profitability for the first time in its history and has been posting growth worthy of the latest trendy startup since its IPO, isn’t it taking a risk by assiduously courting the Mountain View firm?
As 404 Media reported, Reddit recently toughened its anti-scraping policy by banning all other search engines, like DuckDuckGo or Bing, from accessing its recent content. This is a sign that these two historic players, each of which shaped today’s web, have definitively entered into an exclusive relationship. The strategy may seem beneficial for now, but any site publisher will tell you: it’s best not to rely too heavily on Google to generate traffic.
