Reddit wants now to be a search tool

Jay Peters is a news editor who covers technology, gaming and more. He joined The Verge after almost two years working at Techmeme.

Reddit is aware that it has valuable information from real people. It’s already made deals with companies like OpenAI and Google, to share this data. Reddit has also invested in improving its search capabilities. In its latest update, it is announcing that it will be releasing a new version of its software. Note to investorsCEO Steve Huffman states that the company “concentrates our resources on areas that will drive our most pressing needs”including “making Reddit the go-to search engine.” Huffman also says that “everyweek, hundreds of millions come to Reddit seeking advice, and we are turning more of this intent into active users who use Reddit native search.” Reddit Answers is the platform’s AI tool, which it launched in December. It has 6 million users weekly, up from the 1 million in the first quarter. Huffman says that Reddit will “expand Reddit Answers worldwide, integrate it more deeply into the search experience, and make search a central part of Reddit” to continue building out search.

Of all things, the move to develop its own search capabilities may be a way to protect itself from losing traffic to Google, which is increasingly using AI to provide answers instead of a list of hyperlinks. Reddit has experienced a traffic surge as a result of adding the word “Reddit”a classic method to get human-written information, to Google searches. Reddit may need better search capabilities if Google is less reliable as a source of traffic.

Reddit celebrated its 20th birthday last month and is investing heavily in AI. In an interview, CTO Chris Slowe said The Verge at the time that the initial launch of Reddit Answers was “going really well.” “The internet is changing, and our role is becoming more important as a platform for human connections,” Huffman says.