Reddit doubles down on its AI search ambition

Reddit is no longer content to be the place people find after they search. The platform wants to be where the search begins. For much of its two-decade history, Reddit has been a hub for community discussion, treated less like a destination and more like infrastructure, a place whose conversations quietly power search results elsewhere. Users type “site:reddit.com” into Google. Language models train on its forums. Publishers cite its threads as evidence of real-world sentiment.

Inside Reddit, however, executives have been signaling for more than a year that the company no longer wants to exist primarily as a back-end utility for other platforms. It wants to be where those searches happen in the first place. In August last year, CEO Steve Huffman noted during its letter to investors that Reddit plans to become a “go-to search engine” for community-driven knowledge. This corroborates the company’s announcement in February last year that it would introduce an enhanced AI search experience.

That ambition surfaced again during Reddit’s fourth-quarter earnings call, where the company outlined how it is folding its traditional search engine and its in-product AI answers feature into a single experience and why it sees search as a future growth area that could eventually support monetization. “Search is not monetized today, but it’s an enormous market and opportunity,” Huffman told analysts.

The remarks extend a message Reddit has been pushing: that the platform’s vast archive of user-generated discussion is well suited to a class of queries where people are not looking for a single authoritative answer, but a range of experiences, opinions, and practical advice. “There’s a type of query we’re particularly good at — I would argue, the best on the internet — which is questions that have no answers, where the answer actually is multiple perspectives from lots of people,” Huffman said.

The company is positioning itself as less of a social feed and more as a generative AI answers destination. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has been consistent in framing search within the company’s broader mission. During the Q4 call, Huffman said, “We’re not just a social site,” “We’re a place people come for answers.”

The company said it is already in the works to make this possible. Part of the plan is the rollout of Reddit Answers, its AI search feature that summarizes community conversations and directs users to relevant threads. Reddit said it has made “significant progress” in bringing its core search product and Reddit Answers into a single experience, aiming to reduce the friction between browsing communities and seeking specific information.

The company has also expanded Reddit Answers into five additional languages, begun testing media-rich responses that combine summaries with images and links to source posts, and is testing dynamic result modules that surface context from multiple discussions alongside traditional search listings. Reddit also began using Google’s Gemini model to power parts of its AI-enhanced search features, including Reddit Answers.

Reddit is also preparing to remove the logged-in/logged-out distinction for users starting in Q3 2026, allowing the platform to personalize search results and suggestions based on behavior, whether or not someone has an account. 

Reddit believes it has the user base to scale AI search

Reddit believes its audience base already supports a search-focused strategy. Reddit’s own data points to increases in search use. Weekly active users of Reddit’s search tools grew 30% year over year, from 60 million to 80 million. Usage of Reddit Answers increased from roughly 1 million weekly active users in Q1 2025 to 15 million by Q4 2025.

In Q4 2025, Reddit also reported 121.4 million daily active users, up 19% year-over-year in the U.S., while daily active users increased 9% domestically, and international DAU grew 28%.

These figures matter less as standalone milestones and more as evidence of behavior that Reddit has historically benefited from indirectly. For years, users have treated Reddit as an informal answers database, often arriving through external search engines. The company now argues that a growing share of those users is beginning to conduct that discovery inside Reddit itself.

These usage trends also map onto Reddit’s broader traffic scale. In 2025, Reddit became the second-most-visited website in the U.S., surpassing many established news and community platforms. The platform believes it does not need to manufacture search demand from scratch. The demand already exists in the form of daily questions, troubleshooting threads, and opinion-driven discussions posted across its communities.

But it has the likes of Google, OpenAI, and others to contend with. Google has been reworking its search experience around conversational responses and summaries. Microsoft continues to integrate similar features into Bing. OpenAI has positioned ChatGPT as a starting point for many information queries. However, Reddit bets that it can own a share of the AI search market.

Search and advertising potential

Reddit does not currently show traditional paid ads within its internal search results or Reddit Answers features; its advertising revenue today is generated through placements in feeds and other surfaces across the platform. Nonetheless, executives see the growth of search and answers as a way to expand long-term revenue potential, since a more engaged and returning user base strengthens inventory across the platform.

Advertising remains the company’s primary revenue engine. In Q4 2025, ad revenue increased 75% year over year to $690 million.

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