By Olivia Hart

Reddit appears in 83.9% of Google's Discussions and Forums results worldwide, and the figure keeps moving higher.

How dominant is Reddit really?

The Discussions and Forums box shows in 11.7% of US searches. That's 16.93 million appearances across a dataset of 145 million Google queries. Reddit captured 87.8% of those US SERPs, with an average of 1.29 link placements per appearance, putting it ahead of every rival by a wide margin. Worldwide, Reddit sat at 83.9%, and early August data pushed that share to 86.1%, a climb large enough to register in weeks. When Google surfaces community answers, Reddit answers first.

What about Facebook and Quora?

Facebook holds the second slot at 38.3% of US Discussions and Forums instances. The figure holds worldwide, per the dataset. All Facebook placements point to posts inside public Groups, which officially launched in October 2010. Facebook overtook its main rival in January, the researchers noted. Reddit led in 34 countries, but Facebook topped four: South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Samoa. It also placed second in 23 more, including the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Facebook's rise is regional, and strongest where Reddit is weakest.

Are newer forums breaking through?

Not really. The average subreddit age in the top 100 sits at 16 years and 1 month. The youngest is r/ScienceBasedParenting, created 8 years ago. Across all top-1,000 domains, average age climbs to 21 years and 8 months, older than most modern SEO careers. Only XDAforums.com looked genuinely young at under three years, but it redirects from an older forum. The Gear Forum, at under four years old, ranked 748th worldwide with 1,200 appearances. Google rewards established forums, not fresh launches chasing this feature.

How concentrated is the feature?

Very. The top 10 domains account for 84.87% of all links. The top 100 reach 91.51%. Domains ranked 501 to 1,000 contribute just 1.49%. Many lean on a single thread: 768 of the top 1,000 domains rely on one URL for at least 1% of their presence, and 27 of them rely on a single URL for at least 10%. A Gleneagles Hospital health question drove 67% of that site's appearances. A 2020 post with no replies accounted for 30% of skill.jobs's presence in the feature. A few old threads carry most of the weight.

Does Domain Rating matter?

Some, but less than expected. The average DR across the top 1,000 sites was 58.3. The top 100 averaged 78, and the bottom 100 averaged 48. The Spearman correlation between prominence and DR was just 0.38, driven almost entirely by the very top of the list. Backlinks help at the top, and mean little below it.

What did the researchers say?

The analysis came from Ahrefs, led by content marketer Glen alongside data scientist Xibeijia Guan. "I wasn't surprised to see how dominant Reddit is, but I was fascinated by Facebook's growth and just how reliant some sites are on a small number of URLs to appear," Glen said. He added: "I've monitored the Discussions and forums SERP feature for years, so analyzing it at this scale was really exciting." Even insiders are watching Facebook's curve.

What should site owners watch next?

The feature keeps expanding into commercial-intent queries, which now drive 40.9% of appearances. Only 0.6% carry navigational intent, and the rest are informational. Eight-word searches pull up the box at roughly three times the average rate. Reddit's share climbed to 86.1% by early August, suggesting the leader will widen the gap. Watch Facebook's regional spread, and any new entrant that cracks the top 25.