Reddit wants to be a search engine now
Reddit knows that it has valuable data from actual people — it’s already reached deals with big AI companies like OpenAI and Google to share its data with them. But Reddit is also investing in improving its own search capabilities, and in its latest note to investors, CEO Steve Huffman says that the company is “concentrating our resources on the areas that will drive results for our most pressing needs,” including “making Reddit a go-to search engine.”
Huffman says that “every week, hundreds of millions of people come to Reddit looking for advice, and we’re turning more of that intent into active users of Reddit’s native search.” Reddit’s core search has more than 70 million weekly active unique users — Reddit overall averages 416.4 million weekly active unique users — and Reddit Answers, the platform’s AI search tool that it launched in December, has 6 million weekly users, up from 1 million weekly users in the first quarter of this year.
To continue to build out search, Reddit is “expanding Reddit Answers globally, integrating it more deeply into the core search experience, and making search a central feature across Reddit,” Huffman says.
