Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says Google's AI Overviews cannot replace the classic "10 blue links" as a source of referral traffic, CNBC reports — a direct rebuttal to the growing assumption in the publishing and SEO communities that AI-generated answers will drain clicks from websites that rank in organic search.

Huffman's position matters because Reddit sits at the center of the current shift in Google's results. Over the past two years, Reddit threads have gained visible prominence across Google Search, particularly for product reviews, troubleshooting queries, and experience-driven research. That visibility has made Reddit one of the most-cited examples — and one of the biggest beneficiaries — of Google's renewed emphasis on forum and community content.

It has also made Reddit a frequent source inside Google's AI Overviews, the AI-generated summaries that appear above traditional results for a growing share of queries. Publishers, affiliate sites, and informational content owners have reported traffic erosion they attribute to those summaries answering queries without a click. Huffman's comments, as relayed by CNBC, draw a line between that concern and his own view: users will keep clicking through, and the blue-link referral model is not going away.

Confirmed statement vs. tool signals

It is worth separating what is confirmed here from what remains speculation. Confirmed: the Reddit CEO's public assessment that AI Overviews do not replace the ten-blue-links model for referral traffic. That is a stated opinion from a platform executive, not a measured dataset from Google.

What remains unresolved is the empirical picture. Third-party tools and publisher dashboards have shown mixed signals on AI Overview click-through impact since the feature rolled out widely in mid-2024, but Google does not publish click data for AI Overview impressions in a way that lets site owners verify losses independently. Google has repeatedly said it aims to send quality traffic even as it answers more queries directly.

Why Reddit's CEO has skin in this game

Huffman's confidence is not abstract. Reddit's traffic and search visibility rose sharply after Google's 2023-2024 algorithm updates rewarded genuine discussion and first-hand experience, and Reddit also holds a reported content-licensing relationship with Google that surfaced in early 2024. The CEO of a platform that ranks prominently and gets cited by AI systems has structural reasons to believe referral traffic survives the transition — a perspective that verticals hit harder, such as generic informational publishers and affiliate review sites, may not share.

For site owners, the comment cuts two ways. If the CEO of one of the most-linked domains in AI Overviews still frames blue links as the enduring traffic mechanism, that is a data point suggesting AI summaries and outbound clicks coexist, at least for community-driven content. But it does not contradict documented volatility in niches where the AI answer fully satisfies the query — the pattern where publishers report the steepest declines.

What to watch next

The gap between executive optimism and publisher-reported numbers will be settled by outcomes Reddit reports in future earnings calls: daily active users, logged-in growth, and search-driven traffic figures. Watch also for Google's own statements on AI Overview referral click rates, and for any publisher-side studies with disclosed sample sizes that isolate AI Overview overlap from core-update ranking shifts. Until then, treat "AI Overviews kill clicks" and "blue links are forever" as competing hypotheses — with Reddit's CEO now publicly on record in the second camp.