The world of AI search is transferring 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 grasp what’s occurring.
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). Nevertheless, 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 latest 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 may 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 tougher 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 not too long ago, including ‘?num=100’ to a Google search URL confirmed the highest 100 outcomes as an alternative of simply 10. This was extensively utilized by knowledge firms 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 not works, most instruments are compelled to give attention to the highest 10, or maybe the highest 20, search outcomes. In keeping with Ahrefs, 57.8% of Reddit’s key phrases rank outdoors the highest 20 search outcomes.
So, the explanation Reddit dropped in ChatGPT visibility round September 10 is not any accident. It’s as a result of Google shipped defenses in opposition to AI opponents 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 precise objective of enriching solutions with reasoning.
Whereas OpenAI has entry to Reddit’s API, the corporate seemingly makes use of it for coaching knowledge relatively than for reasoning solutions. Stay retrieval is optimized round sources which might be lower-cost, simpler to refresh, and persistently structured. This helps reconcile why Reddit can have an API deal but nonetheless see seen citations drop.
In knowledge from Profound, a G2 associate, we discovered that Wikipedia’s visibility elevated as Reddit’s dropped. Wikipedia seemingly stuffed the hole as a result of it persistently ranks in Google’s prime outcomes and offers canonical, structured content material, which retrieval methods favor.
.png?width=1071&height=614&name=image%20(14).png)
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 is no such thing as a 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 only a few different tendencies 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 turning into Reddit contributors by default.
- OpenAI simply launched direct checkout on ChatGPT, which is able to give us extra knowledge about how persons are utilizing ChatGPT as a result of attribution might 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 critiques — is the 4th-ranked digital tech and software program supply on ChatGPT, following Wikipedia, Reddit, and TechRadar. That is in keeping with the August 2025 AI Visibility Index Examine by SEMRUSH Enterprise.
Comply with me on LinkedIn for extra of my views on AI search and the way companies can adapt and optimize their website positioning and reply engine optimization (AEO) methods.
