Reddit told shareholders Thursday that its search traffic dropped by more than 1 million referrals per week, on average, during October. That followed a third quarter in which search referral traffic was “down meaningfully.”
On the earnings call, CEO Steve Huffman said the biggest part of Reddit’s working hypothesis is Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode. Reddit also plans to start testing a logged-in-only version of the site in select markets outside the U.S. this quarter.
Huffman said the test is partly meant to decide how much of Reddit people can see before a login prompt, including people who arrive from search. Where Reddit draws that line will decide what a logged-out searcher sees after clicking a Reddit thread from Google in the test markets.
How Much Search Traffic Reddit Says It Lost
Reddit’s third-quarter letter says the search referral decline sped up late in the quarter and continued into October. Logged-out and web traffic took the biggest hit, with some carrying over to logged-in and app traffic because search is a common way users come back to Reddit.
The letter puts October this way, using DAUq for daily active uniques:
“During October, we have seen that search traffic has dropped by more than 1 million referrals on average per week. If this rate of decline continues, current trends would suggest that total DAUqs could fall in Q4, by a low-double-digit percentage from our current base of 130 million DAUqs.”
The letter doesn’t give the weekly referral count that decline is measured against, and it doesn’t break the decline out by search engine.
Reddit’s daily active uniques held at 130.3 million globally from the second quarter to the third. In the U.S., they fell from 53.2 million to 50.7 million.
The U.S. decline was in logged-out DAUq, which fell from 30.1 million to 27.3 million between the second and third quarters. Logged-in U.S. DAUq rose slightly, from 23.1 million to 23.4 million.
Outside the U.S., DAUq grew 24% year over year. Chief Operating Officer Jen Wong said Reddit raised international marketing spend partly to make up for reach lost from search referrals.
Three months earlier, Reddit’s second-quarter letter described search referrals as “choppy,” with traffic more volatile late in that quarter.
Why Huffman Points To AI Overviews And AI Mode
Asked what was driving the Google traffic changes, Huffman said Reddit’s hypothesis has two parts. The biggest is AI Overviews and AI Mode, which he said Google appears to be expanding aggressively in the U.S. and elsewhere. At a minimum, he said, they push other results down the page.
The second factor is machine-translated content, which he said Reddit believes is being ranked lower, mainly affecting traffic outside the U.S. He added that this doesn’t look like the kind of algorithm change that comes and goes, though Reddit doesn’t have visibility into that. Neither the letter nor the call says how much of the decline Reddit attributes to each factor.
Reddit’s CEO said demand for Reddit hasn’t changed. The word Reddit is still among the most-searched words on Google, he said, and “Google is crawling us as hard as ever.” He also said AI Mode “does not drive traffic,” not for Reddit and, as far as he knows, not for anyone else.
I reported in July 2024 that a robots.txt change left Google as the only major search engine able to show Reddit’s newest posts. Reddit had signed a data licensing deal with Google earlier that year.
Asked about data licensing with Google and OpenAI, Huffman said Reddit is in active discussions with no update to share, and that not doing a deal is one possible outcome.
What The Login Test Means For Visitors From Search
Reddit’s letter says it will begin fully testing a logged-in-only experience in select markets outside the U.S. in the fourth quarter. Neither the letter nor the call names the test markets.
The letter says logging in will help users find more relevant content and give Reddit more signals for ad targeting. It also says the change protects access to Reddit’s corpus of data and helps the company adapt to emerging regulations. On the call, Huffman said the vast majority of scraping happens through logged-out access.
He said Reddit needs to find the right boundary “to provide value to the user, whether they’re coming from a shared link or maybe from search themselves or trying out Reddit.” He said some version of Reddit will be available before a hard login prompt, and that Reddit wants shared links to keep working.
“This is a test, but we are going to make this transition,” Huffman said. He said Reddit will likely trade reach for engagement.
Logged-in and app users account for over 80% of Reddit’s monetization, according to the letter. Third-quarter revenue grew 53% year over year to $895 million.
Reddit also plans to keep converting search-referred mobile web users to its app. Only about 13% of eligible mobile web users currently see the app conversion prompt, according to the letter.
Asked whether brands advertise on Reddit to show up in AI models, Wong said Reddit is “pretty skeptical of GEO,” or generative engine optimization, and fairly resistant to manipulation. GEO isn’t part of Reddit’s advertiser partnerships today, she said.
Why This Matters
Reddit’s figures on lost search referrals are a first-party look at clicks from search on a site whose threads rank across a wide range of Google queries. Huffman described Google’s AI features as the biggest part of Reddit’s hypothesis for the decline.
A Reddit thread that ranks in Google has generally been readable without an account. In the markets where Reddit tests logins, that will depend on where Reddit puts the login prompt.
Looking Ahead
When Reddit’s login tests start in select markets outside the U.S., the first thing to watch is how much of a thread a visitor arriving from Google can read before a login prompt. Reddit says the results will inform “an optimized version of logged-in-only Reddit globally.”
Reddit will also keep reporting logged-in and logged-out daily uniques by geography, CFO Drew Vollero said Thursday. Its fourth-quarter 2025 letter had said Reddit planned to phase that reporting out this year.
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