Search has changed
For 20 years, marketing meant ranking in a list of blue links. That's changing. AI now reads the web for people and gives back one answer, often with no click to any website. Capgemini found 58% of consumers now use AI instead of search for product recommendations, up from 25% in 2023.[6]
More and more, the decision happens inside that answer, before anyone reaches your site. So the question is simple: when AI answers, whose name does it give?
What AI actually quotes
Semrush studied this at scale: 230,000+ prompts and 100 million citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity. The most-quoted source wasn't a brand, a retailer or a news site. It was Reddit (see the chart above).[3] An earlier study found Reddit behind 40.1% of all AI citations, more than Wikipedia and YouTube combined.[4] The exact numbers move between platforms and over time, but Reddit consistently sits at or near the top.
Why Reddit? It's real people answering real questions, sorted by topic and ranked by upvotes — exactly the “best X for Y” language buyers use. That's so valuable that Google reportedly pays Reddit around $60m a year for access, and OpenAI signed its own deal.[7] AI both learns from Reddit and quotes it back.
How much each platform uses Reddit
It also depends on the engine. How much an AI answer leans on social sources — Reddit included — varies a lot between platforms. Tinuiti measured this across nine categories (via the Profound platform, reported by MediaPost in May 2026).[10]
Google's AI Overviews lean on social most — about a fifth of their citations — ahead of Google AI Mode and Perplexity (~13%), ChatGPT (7%) and Copilot (just 1%). It varies by topic too: apparel pulls the most social citations and health the least, because AI is more cautious on sensitive subjects.[10]
It's also moving. Social citations were about a third higher in April 2026 than in October 2025, with Google leaning in (Reddit and YouTube both up). Perplexity went the other way — its Reddit share dropped from about a quarter in February to 7% by April. The trend is up, but it shifts month to month, so it's worth watching rather than setting once and forgetting.[10]
Reddit is big — and still growing
Very, and yes. Reddit ended 2025 with 121.4 million daily users (up 19% on the year) and around 444 million weekly, with revenue up 70%.[1][2] It's still growing fast.
It's happening in the UK too
It's happening here too. In January 2026, Ofcom data (reported by The Guardian) showed Reddit had overtaken TikTok to become Britain's fourth most-visited social platform. It now reaches three in five UK adults online — an 88% rise in two years — and more than three-quarters of 18–24s.[5]
And it's not sudden. Search interest in Reddit has risen for two decades and now sits near its all-time high — worldwide, in the US, the UK and here in Scotland.[9]
What this means for your brand
Here's what most brands are missing: almost no one is acting on this yet. Get into the right Reddit conversations now, while it's early, and you're well placed to keep showing up as AI search grows. It's one of the cheapest head-starts in marketing right now.
The risk is the mirror image. A good website isn't enough on its own. If the conversation AI trusts is on Reddit without you, you can be left out just as a buyer decides — and you won't see it in your analytics, because there's no click to track.
One honest caveat: Reddit isn't right for every brand, and it's no place for hard selling. But where there are active communities in your space, it's becoming one of the best places to listen, take part and build visibility.
How to get featured
You earn it where AI looks. Four moves:
1. Find the conversations. Ask your top customer questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode, and note which subreddits they pull from. That's your map — and few marketers are doing it.
2. Show up properly. Build a real profile and give genuinely useful answers. Reddit rewards substance and punishes selling — right now a helpful mention is worth more than a backlink.
3. Use paid carefully. Reddit ads can lift visibility in the right communities, but they should support real participation, not replace it.
4. Keep it fresh. About half of AI-cited content is under 13 weeks old, so showing up regularly keeps you in the answers.
What an audit covers
If you want to know where you stand, start with an AI-search visibility audit. It shows where you are today, before you spend anything changing it. A good audit covers:
✓ Your brand's visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode
✓ Competitor mentions in AI-generated answers
✓ The Reddit threads and subreddits influencing those answers
✓ What people are actually saying in those communities
✓ Paid media opportunities on Reddit and adjacent platforms
Common questions
How do you get a brand featured in AI search results?
Be present, and talked about positively, in the sources AI quotes — Reddit most of all. AI builds answers from existing conversations, so brands that come up helpfully in the right communities are far more likely to be recommended. Genuine participation plus some paid support speeds it up.
Which AI platforms cite Reddit?
All the big ones. Across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity, Reddit is consistently one of the most-cited sites — the most-cited in some studies — and Google's AI Overviews rely on it heavily.
Is getting cited by AI different from SEO?
It's related but not the same. SEO is about getting your own pages to rank. Getting cited by AI is about being mentioned on the sources AI trusts — and Reddit is near the top of that list. The two work together.
How quickly can we see results?
Gradually. Since about half of AI-cited content is under 13 weeks old, useful posts can start showing up in answers within weeks — but the real advantage comes from staying active over time.
REFERENCES
[1] Reddit, Inc. — Fourth Quarter & Full-Year 2025 Results (DAUq 121.4M, +19% YoY; revenue $726M, +70%). Reported 5 February 2026. CNBC.com/Reddit Investor Relations. cnbc.com/2026/02/05/reddit-rddt-q4-2025.html
[2] Reddit, Inc. — Q3 2025 Share holder Letter & SEC Form 8-K (WAUq 443.8M; 2bn+ posts, 20bn+ comments). 30 October 2025. investor.redditinc.com
[3] Semrush — The Most-Cited Domains in AI: A 3-Month Study (230,000+ prompts; 100M+ citations; Reddit #1, Oct 2025; ~50% of AI-cited content <13 weeks old). November 2025. semrush.com/blog/most-cited-domains-ai
[4] Semrush — AI citation study of 150,000 citations across 5,000 keywords (Reddit 40.1%; Wikipedia 26.3%; YouTube 23.5%). June 2025, via Statista. statista.com/statistics/1660293
[5] Ofcom data, reported by The Guardian — “Reddit overtakes TikTok to become UK's fourth most-visited social platform” (60% UK reach, upfrom 32%; +88% in two years). 3 January 2026. theguardian.com
[6] Capgemini Research Institute — What Matters to Today's Consumer (58% have replaced search engines with AI for product recommendations, up from 25% in 2023). 2025.
[7] Reuters / industry reporting — Google–Reddit content-licensing agreement (~$60M/year, February 2024); OpenAI–Reddit data partnership (May 2024).
[8] Republic of Media — Gio Cucinotta, “It's 21 years old this year, so why is everyone suddenly talking about Reddit?” 2 February 2026. republicofmedia.co.uk
[9] Google Trends — web search interest for “Reddit”, Worldwide, US, UK and Scotland, 2004–present. Accessed June 2026. trends.google.com
[10] Tinuiti / Profound, reported by MediaPost — Laurie Sullivan, “Google AI Cites More Social, As Perplexity Pulls Back From Reddit” (social citation share by AI platform, April 2026; social share +33% vs October 2025; Perplexity's Reddit share fell from ~25% in February to ~7% in April). 27 May 2026. mediapost.com
Prepared by Spirit Media, Edinburgh · June 2026. Figures are sourced as cited; chart values read from a published visual are noted as approximate. Google Trends figures are relative search-interest indices and are not directly comparable across regions.
