Reddit knows it has valuable data from real users—it has previouslyOpenAIandGoogleWait for large artificial intelligence companies to reach an agreement to share data. But Reddit is also investing in improving its search capabilities. in the latestInvestor Report, CEO Steve Huffman said the company is "focusing resources on areas that address our most pressing needs," including "making Reddit a search engine of choice."
"Hundreds of millions of people come to Reddit every week to seek advice, and we're converting more of that intent into active users on Reddit's native searches," Huffman said. Reddit's core search has more than 70 million weekly active unique users -- Reddit overall has an average of 416.4 million weekly active unique users -- while Reddit Answers, the platform's AI-powered search tool launched in December, has 6 million weekly users, up from 1 million weekly users in the first quarter of this year.
To continue expanding search capabilities, Reddit is "expanding Reddit Answers globally, integrating it more deeply into the core search experience and making search a core feature of Reddit," Huffman said.
Of course, the move to build independent search capabilities may be to avoid losing Google's traffic. Google is increasingly exploring new ways to use artificial intelligence to provide answers rather than a list of links. Adding the word "Reddit" to Google search results is a classic way to get human-written information, and Reddit gets a lot of traffic from it. But if Google is no longer a reliable source of traffic for Reddit, the platform may need to improve its search capabilities.
Reddit turned 20 last month, and the company is making a big push into artificial intelligence. “The Internet is evolving, and our role as a community-led platform for human connection is only becoming more important,” Huffman said.