The world of AI search is shifting quick, and this week’s information is all about Reddit and OpenAI. Or so it appears! In my opinion, it’s actually about Google. Let’s take a step again to know what’s happening.
The information: Reddit’s inventory drops, following its dip in ChatGPT citations.
As individuals more and more shift from Google to AI search, Reddit has been a extremely cited supply throughout giant language fashions (LLMs). Nonetheless, this week noticed a barrage of media headlines highlighting new third-party knowledge — from PromptWatch and others — exhibiting that ChatGPT has been citing Reddit far much less in current weeks.
(Supply: PromptWatch)
Investor considerations about Reddit’s diminished ChatGPT citations led to the corporate’s inventory sliding. Reddit’s inventory worth fell from $240.11 USD on the shut on September 26, 2025, to $205.50 USD on the shut on October 2, 2025. That could be a 14.4% worth drop over the course of 5 days.
Why is Reddit being cited much less in ChatGPT outcomes?
Google made it more durable to crawl its search outcomes, main OpenAI to make use of Reddit’s API, which can be extra expensive.
Let’s dig into this.
Round September 10, Google eliminated the num=100 parameter from its search. Till just lately, including ‘?num=100’ to a Google search URL confirmed the highest 100 outcomes as a substitute of simply 10. This was extensively utilized by knowledge corporations scraping Google search outcomes – together with suppliers that OpenAI reportedly buys knowledge from. OpenAI doesn’t crawl Google straight however purchases search knowledge from third events, which relied on the now-removed parameter.
Now that the parameter now not works, most instruments are pressured to deal with the highest 10, or maybe the highest 20, search outcomes. In line with Ahrefs, 57.8% of Reddit’s key phrases rank exterior the highest 20 search outcomes.
So, the explanation Reddit dropped in ChatGPT visibility round September 10 isn’t any accident. It’s as a result of Google shipped defenses towards AI rivals scraping their knowledge.
In consequence, I think ChatGPT runs fewer Retrieval-Augmented Era (RAG) crawls to Reddit. A RAG crawl refers to an online crawler getting used to gather knowledge from web sites for the particular objective of enriching solutions with reasoning.
Whereas OpenAI has entry to Reddit’s API, the corporate doubtless makes use of it for coaching knowledge reasonably than for reasoning solutions. Stay retrieval is optimized round sources which are lower-cost, simpler to refresh, and constantly structured. This helps reconcile why Reddit can have an API deal but nonetheless see seen citations drop.
In knowledge from Profound, a G2 accomplice, we discovered that Wikipedia’s visibility elevated as Reddit’s dropped. Wikipedia doubtless crammed the hole as a result of it constantly ranks in Google’s high outcomes and supplies canonical, structured content material, which retrieval techniques favor.
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There are a number of forces at play concurrently, making the AI search panorama an fascinating one to observe proper now!
On the time of this text’s publication, there isn’t any publicly confirmed change from OpenAI or Google particular to Reddit. Whereas it’s unclear the place issues will head subsequent with Reddit’s citations, one factor we all know for sure is that change is inevitable. And alter is going on quick!
Listed here are just some different developments I’ve noticed over the previous few weeks throughout the AI search panorama:
- Reddit proposed a brand new deal to OpenAI and Alphabet that features dynamic pricing primarily based on AI reply inclusion and Google customers changing into Reddit contributors by default.
- OpenAI simply launched direct checkout on ChatGPT, which is able to give us extra knowledge about how individuals are utilizing ChatGPT as a result of attribution shall be a lot simpler.
- Person-generated content material (UGC) nonetheless wins in LLM outcomes, regardless of the Reddit information this week. Reddit remains to be essentially the most cited UGC platform by far. And, software program market G2 — that includes over 3 million opinions — is the 4th-ranked digital tech and software program supply on ChatGPT, following Wikipedia, Reddit, and TechRadar. That is in response to the August 2025 AI Visibility Index Examine by SEMRUSH Enterprise.
Observe me on LinkedIn for extra of my views on AI search and the way companies can adapt and optimize their search engine marketing and reply engine optimization (AEO) methods.
