Reddit Plans To Become A Search Engine

Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman said the company is investing in improving its search capabilities during the latest earnings call on Thursday. He noted that the focus is on areas that can drive better results, including “making Reddit a go-to search engine.”

According to The Verge, Huffman explained to investors that “every week, hundreds of millions of people come to Reddit looking for advice.” Reddit’s goal is to turn that traffic into engaging results.

“We’re turning more of that intent into active users of Reddit’s native search,” added Huffman during the call.

Reddit has over 70 million weekly active users who rely on the platform’s core search, and around 416.4 million users interact with the platform every week.

Just a few weeks ago, Reddit became the second most cited site in Google AI Overviews—after Quora—highlighting the platform’s role in providing niche information that is often difficult to find elsewhere.

In order to expand the platform’s search capabilities, Huffman said the company will be  “expanding Reddit Answers globally, integrating it more deeply into the core search experience, and making search a central feature across Reddit.”

According to Engadget, Reddit has already been working on leveraging AI by integrating its  LLM-powered search. Now, Huffman suggests the platform has the potential to become a search engine in its own right. In fact, many users already treat Reddit as one.

“Our focus right now is on unifying the Reddit search, like traditional search on Reddit, which is very widely used on Reddit, and the new Reddit answers product … we’re unifying those into a single search experience, and we’re going to bring that front and center in the app,” said Huffman.

Reddit launched Reddit Answers, an AI-powered search tool, in December, allowing users to find answers through its AI-driven interface. The tool offers summaries, follow-up questions, suggestions, and links to related posts on the platform.