Google’s AI Search could erode Reddit traffic

Google is reshaping how users find answers online, and that’s spelling trouble for Reddit. The tech giant introduced a significant update to its search engine at the Google I/O 2025 conference.

The new feature, AI Mode, changes the standard Google Search bar to resemble an AI chatbot. These features provide users with direct, AI-generated answers to queries, often summarizing content from various sources, including Reddit, without requiring users to visit the original sites.

AI Mode offers human answers instead of the standard list of links. It’s driven by a customized version of Google’s Gemini 2 generative AI model. The tool can answer tricky questions, search many sources at once, and give the results in a reader-friendly way.

AI Mode was first launched to U.S.-based Google One AI Premium users in early 2025. Google has announced that it will be officially available to every user in the U.S. over the next few weeks. A worldwide launch is planned for later this year.

“AI Mode is where we will first bring our frontier capabilities into search,” CEO Sundar Pichai said. He referred to it as a “complete overhaul” of the search experience.

The change is part of a broader effort by Google to remain competitive in the battle over AI-powered search. Competitors like Microsoft, with Bing AI, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT have already incorporated similar features. Google’s answer is audacious — and possibly fraught with risk.

AI Mode puts Reddit’s search traffic at risk

One platform with the potential to be heavily affected is Reddit. Traditional Google Search has been very good for Reddit.

You can use any search engine you want, but many of us end up on Reddit when looking for human answers to real-world problems, regardless of whether we are logged in. Google has even prioritized Reddit links in the search rankings in recent years, understanding that users can often put more trust in a forum than a cookie-cutter website.

But with AI Mode, Google could start answering user questions directly from data scraped off sites like Reddit—without ever driving a click to them. So fewer people will potentially click through to Reddit properly.

This is no small concern. The recent growth on Reddit has been powered largely by logged-out users—people who browse Reddit casually and find the site via search. These users are not the loyal base of Reddit, but they do have numbers.

If AI Mode starts feeding Reddit-style responses without pointing to the site, that could be the quickest path to drying up a big source of visitors. That fear is already being reflected in the market.

In February, Reddit’s stock tumbled more than 15% after the company announced its traffic had been “choppy” since Google’s search algorithm changed. Reddit’s chief executive, Steve Huffman, has said Google’s updates have meant that Reddit is unsure what traffic it can count on going forward.

Reddit strengthens its community to offset AI traffic loss

While search traffic is nice to have, the company’s strength is its logged-in user base. These regular users visit Reddit directly and participate in community discussions.

These users stay longer, engage with more meaningful content, and bolster ad revenue.

However, Reddit is also developing its own AI tools. In March 2025, it introduced Reddit Answers, an AI system that surfaces useful summaries from Reddit threads.

Now, the platform is putting Reddit Answers front and center by adding it to its main search bar to help people find authentic, community-driven content more easily. This is a play partly in defense and partly in offense. It tries to lock users onto the platform using AI tools from Google and others.

Reddit’s CEO, Steve Huffman, expressed confidence in the long-term value of human voices despite the rise of AI in search. He acknowledged that large language models (LLMs) change how people search online.

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