Type a query into Google – a poorly phrased, irreplaceably earnest question about something inane, such as “What is the best way to fold your socks before going on a trip?” and you’ll be met with what Google ranks as the number one response. Currently, that’s a 30 second How-To YouTube video courtesy of Portable Professional (Travel Tips with Megan).
But scroll a few inches further – past the increasingly favoured video content – and you’ll be met with a Reddit post: “How are we packing socks?” posted in r/HerOneBag: a subreddit devoted to single bag packing solutions for women, LGBTQ+, disabled people and parents. Too specific for your query? The subreddit has 129K members, and it’s showing up above wikiHow.
Recently, as far as Google is concerned, Reddit has the best answer to every question raised. But go back as little as the start of 2024, and Reddit wasn’t even worth a cursory glance. That is, until August that year, when in the space of a single week, Reddit surges from the 78th most visible site in Google’s U.S. search results to the 3rd. Ranking only behind Amazon and Wikipedia.
How? Well, that unprecedented rise happens just six months after Reddit quietly sells access to all of its data API to Google as part of a $60 million per year contract. Did Reddit do a dodgy deal to get to the top of Google searches? Yes, and no. It’s complicated. Don’t worry, that’s why we’re here, as a digital marketing business and Reddit affiliate, to explain what’s actually going on, and what it really means for marketing on Reddit.
So, what’s actually going on?
In Google’s August 2024 core update, the traditional tools of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) were thrown out of the toolshed. Digital marketers, like ourselves, had to grapple with the reality of the world’s largest search engine no longer favouring the strict rules and strategies that moved content up through the rankings. Instead, in the wake of SEO oversaturation, Google would now follow a larger trend – the favouring of organic, human content.
And by that, of course, Google meant the absorption of that organic, human content by its goliath artificial intelligences for the sake of their own maturing – their own ability to detect what is human, and what is not. But where could Google find a wealth of such content? Or did, conveniently, they just-prior to the update, purchase all of Reddit’s past, present and future user content for the aforementioned figure of $60 million per annum? What a happy coincidence for Google indeed.
But if the transaction is simply Google stripping Reddit of its innards, how has Reddit also come out of the deal so well? $60 million may be a lot of money, but that figure is a fraction of what its newfound Google visibility is worth – was its new ranking just a cheeky bonus that Google threw in for being a good sport about the deal? If so, then Google really went above and beyond when, as part of the deal, it gave Reddit access to Vertex AI for the development of its platform.
Less than a conspiracy, it seems more like mild collusion amidst happy timing. Google had already been recognising users’ desire for more authentic, specific responses to queries, and that’s something Reddit provides in abundance. Scarcely anywhere else on the internet can you find troubleshooting for a discontinued PlayStation One game, but on Reddit, you may find a discussion between a dozen people on that exact topic. Users know this. Google knows this. The number of users adding ‘Reddit’ to their search queries certainly came up at a few meetings in Silicon Valley, too.
What also probably came up, is the fact that internet users now live in an ocean of AI-generated content – useless for Google’s homegrown AI’s – and Reddit offers an island nation of imperfect, and entirely human, content. Google’s interest toward Reddit, in this sense, reflects its position within a larger movement against a growing issue: AIs talking to AIs – one creating patterns, the other optimising their resolution, another creating more complex patterns, another further optimising an abstract resolution. Perfectly drafted SEO content would ultimately read as nothing more than code.
The culmination of this is an internet abjectly foreign, non-human, populated more by machines than us. Jacob Silverman coined it the ‘Hostile Internet’ for the Financial Times, but perhaps more famously (and more apocalyptically) it is referred to online as the ‘Dead Internet Theory.’ That isn’t something Google wants. It needs human users. Our data and information are its most profitable resource, after all.
Wait, what’s the problem with being more human?
The prioritisation of human-made content must surely be a good thing then – if Google’s AIs can use Reddit to learn how to be more human, to learn what is human, then surely, that is great strides away from a ‘Dead Internet?’ Yes, in one sense, but learning from Reddit also begets another set of moral quandaries of its own.
In May 2025, Google introduced a new artificial intelligence mode that more firmly embedded chatbot capabilities into its search engine. The ‘searching’ of a Google user is now essentially automated by an AI which (viewing all results simultaneously) presents users with the ‘best’ answer. Naturally – post Reddit data purchase – this chatbot also pulls answers direct from Reddit, Google’s favourite source of authoritative, human answers.
But therein lies the problem – since when did human mean authoritative? If Google is deciding who on Reddit to trust, it may follow those with the highest ‘Karma’, a points system, awarded by other users, that delineates authority and experience. Those with the highest Karma would display the highest ‘authority’ to an AI and therefore be entrusted with producing the most accurate responses.
But Karma isn’t specific to subject, Taylor Swift’s most diligent follower will likely have amassed masses of Karma for insightful posts on the superstar, but what if they are also an abysmal, yet enthusiastic, amateur car mechanic, engaged in countless subreddits, advising people that vegetable oil works the same as engine oil? Will an AI know to not trust them in one faculty, and yet trust them in another?
Moderators, you might retort, are authorities in charge of a Reddit page, and are able to filter out the disinformation, remind people that cooking oil is not motor oil. And this might be deemed an acceptable failsafe, if there was any qualification required to be a Reddit moderator, or any applicability of real-life experience. For all anyone knows, the moderation of a sub-reddit could quite easily have been outsourced to an AI – now that’s a ‘Dead Internet.’
So then, how to use Reddit for marketing?
Controversy aside, Reddit is now one of the most important tools for marketers and advertisers. We’re glad, relieved and a touch smug to say that our digital marketing team has been keeping an eye on the potential of using Reddit for marketing for a couple of years now, and we feel comfortably teed up ahead of what we’re pre-emptively coining ROC: Reddit-Optimised-Content.
So, if you’re a brand or marketer new to this – wondering how to use Reddit for marketing – there is a decidedly single-minded way in which you can start using Reddit to your advantage, today. Quite plainly, our initial advice is to get involved. Start commanding a space for your brand within its relevant subreddits. If you’re selling a product primarily composed of coconut oil, immerse yourself in subreddits to do with cooking, of course, but also vegetarian cooking, vegan cooking, Malaysian cooking, Thai cooking. Become as specific and as involved as possible, become the authority, but above all else, remain recognisably human.
But if you’re truly invested in putting Reddit to better use for your brand, you’ll need a fully fleshed out strategy and implementation from a Reddit affiliated digital marketing business such as ourselves. Because if there’s anything to take away from this article, it’s that the true significance of Reddit – its new relevance as a social media platform which can be actively participated in, that ranks higher in search than any other, that can alter Google’s own AI model to indirectly promote a brand – isn’t something marketers can necessarily afford to let pass by.
And if you’re still asking the question: ‘is Reddit a good place to advertise?’ You can stop reading this article, right now, and simply type your question into Google instead – just make sure you take notice of where it finds its answer.
