Reddit in Google’s Search Results
Reddit’s traffic from Google Search has gone through the roof this year!
In Feb this year Google did a deal with Reddit allowing Google to directly access Reddit content through API and use it for training its LLMs. But for some reason post that Reddit’s ranking just went through the roof! Its suddenly started to show up everywhere in search results.
Even though Google’s spokesperson told Business Insider that “Our agreement with Reddit absolutely did not include ranking its content higher on Search.” but still I’m surprised to see!! This steep growth starting around Feb that’s when Google did deal with Reddit.
Even though Reddit saw massive surge in ranking this year, it wasn’t alone other forums also improved in ranking. Even I noticed many forums suddenly surging in Google’s Search results and showing up for 1000s of keywords with content which is years old and is no longer relevant. Some examples that I posted on X throughout this year.
Not only Reddit ranking everywhere! But at the same time Google introduced more ways to display it – allowing comments to be expanded in the search results and showing “Related content” below it (screen recording of this which I posted on X on 25 Oct). Also in August I noticed Google showing Reddit in Google Discover too! Which was actually concerning for publishers who get traffic from Discover given its just limited space there and what if Google start to push Reddit everywhere there (which fortunately didn’t happen).
This Reddit everywhere thing ended up becoming a big problem for one of my SEO client. But Google’s Search Liaison in an interview also said that “I think there’s a huge value in what we’ve been doing in showing more of this kind of content because it is really helpful.”
That’s why I think that going into 2025 we will see more of social content in Google’s Search results!
Google Algo Updates this year
| Update Type | Timeline | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| December 2024 Core Update | December 12 – December 18, 2024 | 6 days |
| December 2024 Spam Update (still rolling out as of me writing this) | December 19, 2024 – Expected completion within 1 week | ~7 days |
| November 2024 Core Update | November 11 – December 5, 2024 | 24 days |
| August 2024 Core Update | August 15 – September 3, 2024 | 19 days |
| June 2024 Spam Update | June 20 – June 27, 2024 | 7 days |
| March 2024 Core Update | March 5 – April 26, 2024 | 45 days |
| March 2024 Spam Update | March 5, 2024 – March 20, 2024 | 15 days |
So in total 4 core and 3 spam updates were rolled out by Google this year.
Google adding new spam policies
When Google announced the March 2024 Core Update, they also updated the spam policies and added
Scaled Content Abuse
Site Reputation Abuse
Expired Domain Abuse
Google Creator Summit
Google on 28th and 29th October organised a creator summit in their SF office. 20 site owners who were impacted by Helpful Content Update (HCU) in Sep 2023 were invited to this summit for talking with Google Engineers and provide feedback. But this event was a total disaster I think.
Because essentially Google told everyone attending that they will not recover and its time for them to move.
While there were some key takeaways and learnings too! But all in all this was a total disaster!!
Google’s Site Reputation Abuse Policy
Since March Google had double downed on Site Reputation Abuse (I created a timeline of events) and in November 2024 have issued Manual Actions for the likes of Forbes & have removed their otherwise parasite content from its search results. At the same time Google is quite strict on lifting the manual actions for the sites which got it for abusing this policy. That’s why Google is asking for broad editorial practices change to lift these site reputation abuse manual actions.
Since Google doubling down on this in Nov a lot has happened and I wrote complete summary of everything here.
Going into 2025 – Let’s see what Google do around site reputation abuse?
Manual Actions for publishers (which I never expected)
As I mentioned above Forbes and others got manual actions in Nov 2024 for abusing the site reputation. I NEVER EVER expected this and Google going ahead with taking such a strict action. And literally wiping out their parasite content out of its search results!!
Starkly different and “site in a site” treatment
When Google updated the site reputation abuse policy on 19th Nov 2024. They also mentioned starkly different content and “site in a site” treatment.
Here is what Google said
Aside from site reputation abuse issues, we also have systems and methods designed to understand if a section of a site is independent or starkly different from the main content of the site. By treating these areas as if they are standalone sites, it better ensures a level playing field, so that sub-sections of sites don’t get a ranking boost just because of the reputation of the main site. As we continue to work to improve these systems, this helps us deliver the most useful information from a range of sites.
Our efforts to understand differences in sections of sites can lead to traffic changes if sub-sections no longer benefit from site-wide signals. This doesn’t mean that these sub-sections have somehow been demoted or are in violation of our spam policies. It means we’re measuring them independently, even if they are located within a site.
I think that this would be amazing for the whole web ecosystem. And I hope that going into 2025 Google start to execute this at scale and hopefully will tell us too when these systems start to operate at full scale therefore impacting what’s ranking in Google’s Search Results and what not.
This change in how Google ranks webpages will be helpful to deliver the most useful information from a range of websites which I think is amazing.
But at the same time SEO professionals working on expansion of topics projects for sites would have be careful too.
That’s what I talked about in my one of my X post …….
That’s it
A lot has happened this year in 2024! Both in my personal life and of course SEO life!
I’m looking forward to 2025 and I think that its going to be an amazing year 😎
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