Reddit lost over a million weekly search visits, and its CEO blames Google's AI Mode
Redacción IvokaOct 31, 12:00 PM 3 min
Its CEO attributes the drop to Google's AI answers, though that is his hypothesis; if you depend on being found on Google, the signal matters.
Reddit told shareholders that its search traffic dropped by more than 1 million referrals per week, on average, during October, according to Search Engine Journal. Its CEO, Steve Huffman, named Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode as the biggest factor in that decline, per PPC Land.
The facts
- The decline sped up late in the third quarter and continued into October.
- Reddit warned that its 130 million daily users could fall by a low-double-digit percentage in the fourth quarter.
- Huffman said on the earnings call that AI Mode does not drive traffic to Reddit.
- Huffman framed that explanation as Reddit's working hypothesis. Neither the shareholder letter nor the call says how much of the decline is due to each factor.
- The company gave no total for search referrals and no split by search engine, so it is unclear what share the lost million represents.
Why it matters to you
If your business gets customers because it shows up on Google (through a blog, a catalog or reviews), this is a data point worth keeping in mind. Reddit is a very large case and its figures are first-party, but it is one site and the explanation is its CEO's hypothesis, not something Google confirmed.
A practical step: don't depend on a single channel. With a content calendar and your own contact list (email, WhatsApp) you can reach your people without going through the search engine.
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