Reddit shifts towards search because companies want to become search engines
You may not need to add “Reddit” to your Google search much longer. You can now go directly to the source.
In him Q2 Letter to shareholdersReddit CEO Steve Huffman said the company will integrate search capabilities. Reddit Answerscurrently available in the US and 11 other countries, “to a single search experience.”
Reddit brings you more search boxes in the app, bringing you “front and center.”
“Whether you’re the new user who opens an app for the first time or returns a user who opens the app, that search box is immediately present for users who open the app looking for something specific,” says Huffman. “Sometimes people open the app with questions.”
This seems to be a natural direction for Reddit, and now Over 70 million weekly active users Its search capabilities and over 6 million weekly active users using Reddit Answers. Huffman believes Reddit is ideally positioned in a world where people increasingly want human-driven answers to mass-driven searches of Reddit chat.
“Eighty percent of users in recent surveys believe that, in contrast to AI-generated summaries, some questions can only be answered by humans,” Huffman said over the phone.
It appears that there is a demand for Reddit as a source of information and answers from users. Frofound, a platform that helps increase brand visibility in AI search environments, is known for Reddit. No. 1 Most cited source For AI platforms Google Overview and Confusedand No. 2 chatgpt During search. Profound said the 46.7% Reddit’s perplexity rate showed that searchers “strongly prefer community-generated content.”
Vanessa FoxDigital Marketing Consultants and Authors Marketing in the era of Googlecalled Reddit Shift to search for wise things.
“It’s certainly a wise idea to add ‘Reddit’ to your search queries to ask for Reddit, especially when searching Google. “With apps becoming a standard part of the online experience, people are even more used to using non-Google search experiences for certain types of content, and Tiktok is an obvious example of that.”
In its second quarter revenue report for 2025, Reddit saw its revenue growth of 78% last year, up to $500 million. Huffman has 110 million daily active users, up 21% from last year and 21%.
Fox added that Reddit needs to be careful due to more AI spam.
“When Google began to feature Reddit results more prominently in search results, they flocked to Reddit with spammers (many of which use AI content) and began posting them to threads already ranked on Google. “Reddit needs to fight that. So, if this unified search is successful, they probably need to fight more AI content. Unfortunately, this is the landscape we are in.”