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Reddit CEO links drop in web traffic to Google AI summaries and AI search mode
IA en un minuto newsroom · Editor: Jon Elgezabal
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Reddit has lost over 1 million referrals every week from search engines during October, on average. Steve Huffman, its chief executive, attributes this to AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google's AI search features. Google maintains, in contrast, that quality clicks have grown.
Steve Huffman, co-founder and chief executive of Reddit, has put numbers on the effect Google's AI has on his platform's visits. According to Ultima Hora, he explained it on the call with investors about third-quarter results: referred traffic, which reaches Reddit from links on other websites, social networks or search engines, fell notably over that period and the situation has carried into the fourth. In October alone, visits from search engines have dropped by more than 1 million referrals per week, on average.
Huffman points to AI Overviews, the AI summaries Google shows above its results, and AI Mode, its conversational search mode, as the cause. "AI mode does not generate traffic," he said, describing the change as a fundamental one in how Google works, which used to send visits to other sites and now no longer does. Google, for its part, maintains that quality clicks have grown, meaning those after which the person stays on the page instead of leaving right away.
According to CNBC, Reddit beat the quarter's earnings and revenue forecasts, but its sales outlook for the fourth quarter came in below what Wall Street expected and its shares fell more than 15%. The drop in Google traffic weighs on the company's plan to require users to log in, which it will begin testing outside the United States in the fourth quarter, with no firm date for the rest.
Why it matters · analysis and opinion
That a platform with as large an audience as Reddit admits Google no longer sends it visits as before points to a deeper change in the web: the search engine answers by itself and links carry less weight. Reddit can cushion it because it focuses on users who arrive directly, something almost no small business has. For a company that depends on showing up in Google, the practical lesson is to reduce that dependence: build its own email or WhatsApp list, look after its business profile and measure how many visits really come from search engines before and after AI switches on in its sector. It remains to be seen whether the clicks that are left, which Google considers more valuable, make up for the lost volume.
Source: Ultima Hora · Written with the help of AI: how we make the news
