I've noticed lately that my Google searches deliver a lot of hits for Reddit groups. John Herrman explains why:
The backstory here is a bit fuzzy and contested, but the basic outline is this: Late last year, Google began prioritizing certain sources of user-generated content in Search in an effort to surface more “first-person perspectives” in response to queries. This, among other less clearly explained changes, seemed to result in more visibility for forumlike sites like Quora and especially Reddit.
....The source of Reddit’s growth is also evident in its official numbers, although it doesn’t break out Google or search traffic specifically. For example, its logged-in daily active-unique-visitor numbers are up 27 percent globally, while its logged-out daily active-unique-visitor numbers are up 70 percent.... This is consistent with growth driven by people tapping on Reddit links in Google rather than organic growth from people seeking out Reddit specifically.
In his letter to investors, CEO Steve Huffman mentions how important Reddit has become to Google — “Reddit was the sixth most Googled word in the U.S.,” he notes — but is somewhat more oblique in talking about how important Google has become to Reddit.
Sure enough, Google Trends suggests that Reddit is now the second-most searched for social media site behind longtime powerhouse YouTube:
Other social media sites like BeReal, Nextdoor, TikTok, and Snapchat barely even register.
Anyway, now you know.
Reddit and Quora are the most likely to have the answer you want, or several for you to pick from. They may have the factually correct answer too.
I've used reddit for years but Google search hardly at all, at least not intentionally.
Google has gotten a lot worse in the last few years and is filled with so much garbage click bait and ads that sometimes clicking on what appears to be a relevant Reddit thread is your best option.
Along with Amazon, which is now full of ripoffs and scams (and a coward piece of bleep owner), the enshitification of the internet continues.
PS: The other one that gets me are recipes, which are laden with filler and useless photos, forcing you to scroll past the same ads repeatedly.
Yep, there are so many content mill articles online that google searches are often not that helpful. I still use google but usually add “Reddit” after whatever I’m searching for unless it’s just a simple piece of trivia.
https://www.justtherecipe.com/
What I like about Reddit is that there are posts that go back more than 15 years for old appliances, cars, and more - that are nearly impossible to retrieve with any of the search kings (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo*).
* is that the most ridiculous name for a product?
Interesting. I had very rarely used Reddit until, I dunno, six months ago? But I noticed recently I've been using it more frequently. Can't say I find it super useful. Like most parts of the internet there's loads of awfulness, but on occasion Reddit can yield the odd useful nugget.
Anyway, Kevin's findings makes sense.
Not being certain if it could be included in the query, but I don't see "X" among the list of the top five. And, why didn't you include Truth Social?-)
I don't know if Google started this trend or it was driven more by users appending the term "reddit" to their search query to find actual human content (to combat Google's declining results relevancy).
I almost never use the term "Reddit" in my searches, but have seen a big increase in results that include content from this platform.
In the past year or so it has become extremely noteworthy to people that even use Reddit lightly that adding "Reddit" to your query will bring up a reasonable list of responses without a lot of bullshit.
Users of Reddit have been commending this "shortcut" for a couple of years to functionally filter out the dross.
Reddit is text-based, and typically any question you can think of, has been asked on Reddit.
Not every answer is going to be 100% helpful, but a lot of times it will be.
+1 What I've come to like about Reddit (as noted by others above) is the preponderance of user answers to questions that haven't been strategically placed and written by content mills looking for advertising revenue.
Quora used to be interesting until they launched their "partners" program which just encouraged people to ask stupid questions looking for engagement.
I didn't realize Reddit was considered a useful (i.e., accurate) source: i'd heard they were going full tilt into AI, too, and immediately put Reddit in the "Unreliable" column.
In any case, I've been using DuckDuckGo for searches for about a year, now. The only thing I use Google for is GoogleMaps - which, I regret to say, is still the best map program around. Though the phone app, which I used to rely on for navigation, is now a PITA as it's become part of Google Play and will absolutely not work at all for directions. Maybe it's time to switch to Waze.
Reddit (fuck u/Spez) signed a deal to have AI trawl its posts so it would bring up links. So of course google prioritizes it.