Traffic Decline Due to AI
Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, revealed during the third-quarter 2026 earnings call that Google's AI-powered search features (AI Overviews and AI Mode) have caused a noticeable drop in incoming traffic to the platform, exceeding one million visits per week during October. Huffman pointed out that these tools no longer act as drivers to attract visitors as they used to, but instead push content away from the main user interface.
Why This News Matters
This statement represents an official acknowledgement from a major platform of the radical shift in web economics. While search engines were historically the primary source of traffic, the integration of generative AI has led to keeping users trapped within the search page, reducing the need to click on external links. This change does not affect Reddit alone, but impacts all publishers and websites that rely on search engine optimization (SEO) to attract audiences.
Reddit's Counter-Strategy
Despite the decline in traffic coming from Google, Huffman emphasized that Reddit remains a leading search term, meaning the demand for content is still high, but Google is no longer directing users with the same efficiency as before. To address this challenge, Reddit is taking strategic steps to transform into a direct daily destination for users, including:
- Launching a "For You" feature to provide personalized recommendations based on user interests.
- Testing AI technologies to turn text posts into short videos to increase engagement.
- Enforcing a mandatory login policy, which the company justifies by improving user experience, enhancing data security, and developing its advertising model.
For its part, Google faces its own challenges with this model, as recent reports have indicated a drop in ad revenues within AI features despite their global expansion. Huffman also raised concerns about the ranking of machine-translated content, noting that Reddit believes such content receives lower rankings in search results, which particularly affects the platform's growth outside the United States.