Reddit Pushes to Become Search Engine With Unified AI Search

Reddit is overhauling its product roadmap to position the 20-year-old platform as a full-fledged search engine, according to a second-quarter shareholder letter from Chief Executive Officer Steve Huffman. The company will merge its conventional search with Reddit Answers—an AI tool launched in December—and relocate a prominent search box to the top of its app and website to make search "a central feature across Reddit." The core search function now attracts more than 70 million weekly active unique users, while Reddit Answers has grown to 6 million weekly users, up from 1 million in the first quarter. Huffman said the feature will be rolled out globally and more deeply integrated into the core search experience, betting that user-generated discussions can deliver more trusted results than traditional AI summaries. The push is intended to reduce the platform’s reliance on referral traffic from Google, even as Reddit licenses its data to Alphabet and OpenAI. The strategy comes amid strong quarterly results: revenue rose 78% from a year earlier to $500 million in the three months to June, and daily active users climbed 21% to 110 million. Reddit believes direct search traffic will enhance engagement and open new advertising opportunities.