Reddit Lost 1 Million Weekly Search Referrals and Blames Google's AI

Reddit told shareholders Thursday that its search traffic dropped by more than 1 million referrals per week, on average, during October. The disclosure came in the company's third-quarter letter, after a quarter in which search referral traffic was "down meaningfully." CEO Steve Huffman's biggest suspect: Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode.

This is a first-party number from one of the most search-dependent sites on the web. That makes it rare, hard evidence of how Google's AI features affect clicks. Here's what Reddit reported, what its CEO said, and what changes next.

How much search traffic did Reddit lose?

The Q3 letter says the decline sped up late in the quarter and kept going into October. Logged-out and web traffic took the biggest hit. Some of that traffic carried over to logged-in and app usage, because search is a common way people return to Reddit.

The letter states it plainly, using DAUq for daily active uniques:

"During October, we have seen that search traffic has dropped by more than 1 million referrals on average per week. If this rate of decline continues, current trends would suggest that total DAUqs could fall in Q4, by a low-double-digit percentage from our current base of 130 million DAUqs."

Reddit didn't disclose the baseline weekly referral count, and it didn't break the decline down by search engine.

The user numbers show where the pain sits:

• Global daily active uniques held at 130.3 million from Q2 to Q3.
• U.S. DAUq fell from 53.2 million to 50.7 million.
• U.S. logged-out DAUq dropped from 30.1 million to 27.3 million.
• U.S. logged-in DAUq rose slightly, from 23.1 million to 23.4 million.
• International DAUq grew 24% year over year.

So the entire U.S. decline came from logged-out users — the people who arrive through search, read a thread, and leave. COO Jen Wong said Reddit raised international marketing spend partly to offset reach lost from search referrals.

Three months earlier, Reddit's Q2 letter had called search referrals "choppy," with traffic more volatile late in that quarter. The volatility has now become a measurable slide.

Takeaway: logged-out search visitors are the segment eroding, and October's loss rate could push total DAUq down by a low-double-digit percentage in Q4.

Why does Huffman point at AI Overviews and AI Mode?

On the earnings call, Huffman laid out a two-part hypothesis. This is Reddit's read of the data, not a confirmed Google statement — Google has not corroborated the attribution.

The biggest factor, he said, is AI Overviews and AI Mode, which Google appears to be expanding aggressively in the U.S. and elsewhere. At a minimum, they push other results down the page. The second factor is machine-translated content, which Reddit believes is being ranked lower — mainly hitting traffic outside the U.S.

Huffman added that this doesn't look like the kind of algorithm change that comes and goes, though Reddit has no visibility into that. The letter and the call don't say how much of the decline each factor explains.

Notably, Huffman said demand for Reddit itself hasn't changed. The word "Reddit" remains among the most-searched words on Google, and "Google is crawling us as hard as ever." His verdict on the new surfaces was blunt: AI Mode "does not drive traffic" — not for Reddit and, as far as he knows, not for anyone else.

There's history here. In July 2024, a robots.txt change left Google as the only major search engine able to show Reddit's newest posts, months after Reddit signed a data licensing deal with Google. Asked about licensing with Google and OpenAI, Huffman said Reddit is in active discussions, has no update to share, and that not doing a deal is one possible outcome.

Takeaway: crawl volume and branded search are steady, which points the finger at what Google shows searchers, not at Reddit's indexation.

What does the login test mean for visitors from search?

Reddit's letter says it will begin fully testing a logged-in-only experience in select markets outside the U.S. this quarter. It didn't name the markets.

The test will partly determine how much of Reddit people can see before a login prompt — including people arriving from search. Where Reddit draws that line decides what a logged-out searcher sees after clicking a Reddit thread from Google in those markets.

The letter gives four stated reasons for the shift:

• Logging in helps users find more relevant content.
• It gives Reddit more signals for ad targeting.
• It protects access to Reddit's corpus of data.
• It helps the company adapt to emerging regulations.

On the call, Huffman said the vast majority of scraping happens through logged-out access. He said Reddit needs to find the right boundary "to provide value to the user, whether they're coming from a shared link or maybe from search themselves or trying out Reddit." Some version of Reddit will remain visible before a hard login prompt, and shared links will keep working.

"This is a test, but we are going to make this transition," Huffman said. He expects Reddit will likely trade reach for engagement.

The financial logic is clear. Logged-in and app users account for over 80% of Reddit's monetization, and Q3 revenue grew 53% year over year to $895 million. Reddit also plans to keep converting search-referred mobile web users to its app — only about 13% of eligible mobile web users currently see that prompt.

Asked whether brands advertise on Reddit to appear in AI models, Wong said Reddit is "pretty skeptical of GEO" — generative engine optimization — and fairly resistant to manipulation. GEO isn't part of Reddit's advertiser partnerships today.

Takeaway: Reddit is willing to shrink its search footprint deliberately, because logged-in users are where the money is.

What to watch next

When the login tests begin outside the U.S., the first metric that matters is how much of a thread a Google visitor can read before hitting the prompt. Reddit says the results will inform "an optimized version of logged-in-only Reddit globally."

There's also a reporting reversal. CFO Drew Vollero said Thursday that Reddit will keep breaking out logged-in and logged-out daily uniques by geography — a disclosure the fourth-quarter 2025 letter had said Reddit planned to phase out this year. That means the market, and the search industry, will keep getting quarterly visibility into whether the referral slide continues.