What Is the Reddit Google AI Deal and What Does It Mean for Search?

Reddit is one of the most popular websites on the Internet. As far as forums go, it dominates over most other platforms. People go there to ask for relationship advice, get help with technical issues, share their hobbies, and a million other things. In fact, it’s hard to think of any topic that isn’t discussed in detail somewhere on Reddit.

It’s not too surprising, then, that Google saw Reddit as an absolute goldmine when it was looking to train its artificial intelligence (AI) tool, leading it to strike a deal with the website. You’re probably on this page because you’re wondering what that Reddit Google AI deal entails, or because you’re a marketer concerned about what it might mean for your search engine optimization (SEO).

Those are the two questions we’re here to answer. Keep reading to find out more — and to get even more helpful SEO content sent straight to your inbox, be sure to subscribe to Revenue Weekly!

What is the Reddit Google AI deal?

In a nutshell, the Reddit/Google deal allows Google to train its AI on Reddit’s content in return for giving Reddit a huge boost in search results (plus a whopping $60 million payout).

To break that down a bit more, the two companies announced in early 2024 that Reddit was giving Google access to content across its website so that Google could use that content to enhance search results. That primarily means that Google started using Reddit to train its generative AI. 

As far as what Reddit gets from the deal, Google emphasized that Reddit would get access to some of Google’s AI tools to improve its internal search features. But the biggest benefit seems to be the fact that Google has started heavily favoring Reddit in search results, giving it way higher rankings than it had before.

Later in the year, Reddit started to block other search engines from indexing its content. However, it continued to allow Google to do so, presumably because of the deal between the two entities.

What does the Google and Reddit deal mean for SEO?

As you can probably guess, the deal between Reddit and Google has some significant ramifications for search results, including SEO. You may be concerned about how this could impact your marketing.

There are three major ways that the Google and Reddit deal will impact search:

• Reddit will show up a lot more in Google search results
• Google’s AI will draw from Reddit
• You won’t see (new) Reddit content in other search engines

Read on to find out more details.

Reddit will show up a lot more in Google search results

As we’ve already covered, the Reddit/Google deal means you can expect to see a lot more Reddit results in Google search results pages. Not only is Reddit now appearing in more searches, but it’s also being ranked much more highly in those searches, often at the very top of search results.

Needless to say, that poses a challenge for SEO. You now have a lot tougher competition in search results for certain keywords. However, it’s not as though Reddit is dominating every search.

You may want to get a feel for which types of keywords Reddit tends to rank highly for vs. which ones it doesn’t. A good rule of thumb is to just think about whether a particular keyword is something you would post about on a forum. Usually, Reddit-dominated keywords will be more niche and specific.

Google’s AI will draw from Reddit

Another way that the Reddit and Google deal will affect search is that Google’s AI responses will draw heavily on content from Reddit. So, is that good or bad? Well… it’s debatable.

When Google’s AI search responses were first rolling out, it became immediately clear that they were a mess — and it was largely thanks to Reddit. The AI had no ability to determine if a given Reddit post was inaccurate and/or facetious, so it would often feature wildly untrue information in its responses.

Google immediately pulled back on that, and it’s likely they’ll continue to improve it going forward. But it’s still uncertain how trustworthy the AI is when it’s being trained on posts with no inherent reputability. It could be argued that this is good for SEO, though, since people will be more likely to click on actual rankings rather than trusting the AI responses.

You won’t see (new) Reddit content in other search engines

The third major impact the Reddit/Google deal will have on search results has nothing to do with Google. Rather, it affects people who use other search engines, like Bing and DuckDuckGo.

As previously mentioned, it wasn’t too long after the deal with Google that Reddit started blocking other search engines from crawling the site. Though Reddit has stated that this is unrelated to the Google deal, it’s hard not to see how immensely this benefits Google. But regardless of the reason, only Google (at present) can index Reddit pages.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Reddit has totally vanished from other search engines. They still have access to all the Reddit pages they’d already indexed before the block was instituted. But it does mean that they won’t be able to access any new Reddit content past that point, so the more time goes by, the more outdated their Reddit results will be.

What does this mean for SEO? Well, it mainly means that there’s a slightly bigger advantage to promoting your site on other search engines. If you’re struggling to outrank Reddit in a particular Google search, trying the same tactic in Bing (for example) might be more effective.

Learn more about the latest SEO trends with Revenue Weekly

The Google and Reddit deal is just one of the recent changes impacting SEO. SEO is constantly changing due to new trends, technology, and updates to search engine algorithms.

If you want to keep up with those changes — and, crucially, how you can navigate them — be sure to subscribe to our email newsletter, Revenue Weekly. We’ll send fresh SEO and marketing content to your inbox on a regular basis to keep you up to date on the industry.

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