Google is now testing showing Reddit content in “Google Discover” feed. Its something that publishers who get organic traffic from Discover MUST keep an eye on – similar to Search Results Google might flood the Discover feed with Reddit.
We have noticed Google prioritising Reddit a lot in search ranking recently – after doing $60 million content deal in Feb. Even Google in their announcement of deal mentioned that partnership with Reddit will facilitate it to display Reddit content in different products.
First in April Reddit started to explode in terms of its content visibility in “Discussion & Forums” search feature and then in May Google was testing a SPECIAL search result snipper interface. Also when in May Google launched AI Overviews (an AI written answer shown at top of Search Results) in US search results as a beta feature it was reported to generated incorrect, misleading and even dangerous answers.
In many cases content in those answers was getting directly picked from Reddit comments or posts. But by 15 July Google controlled how many times they are picking content from Reddit to generate AI Overviews and it was reported that Reddit is barely getting cited in AI Overviews.
Anyway its not hidden anymore that something is going on between Google and Reddit which is leading to surprising high visibility of Reddit content across different Google surfaces.
Also as per current Google Discover – Transparency policies – Google says pages which have clear author names, bylines are the ones which are eligible to be shown in Discover but they do mention that they may make an exception to these policies if they find that there is substantial benefit to public by showing them content which is not aligning with these policies.
It might be possible that Google is considering that there is benefit to public by showing Reddit content in Google Discover.
But as we all know most of Reddit users are anonymous names and have no bylines in most cases – we just need to wait and see if users find it useful that Google surfacing Reddit content in Discover is useful for them.
But I think that this is something that publishers & whole SEO Industry must watch out for.
Even right now I’m noticing that Google is showing posts from Reddit in Discover feed which are just someone posting a link in a subreddit.
Now imagine explaining this to a client – oh we are not showing up in Google Discover but our link posted in some subreddit by an anonymous person is – but all that traffic is going to that Reddit post & comments – but not our page.
And that is my BIGGEST concern because right now I’m consulting for some publishers which are getting well over 60% of their total traffic from Google Discover – but if Google decide to open the gates and flood Discover feed with Reddit content.
My clients and even other publishers getting lot of traffic from Discover will end up loosing A LOT of visibility.
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