Search has changed a lot over the years. You don’t need to be a tech-savvy digital expert to notice it. However, Reddit’s newfound authority on Google has boggled both the general public and search engine optimization (SEO) pros.
We now know that the platform’s surge is a result of Google’s algorithm adjustments.
But I wanted to dive deeper.
Which are the fastest growing subreddits, what factors contribute to their popularity, and how can SEOs take advantage of the current state of search?
Today, I’m revealing the results of my in-depth Reddit research that answers these questions.
Top Reddit Statistics [Key Findings]
- Google’s algorithm changes have massively boosted Reddit’s visibility. Between October 2023 and this year, the website’s organic search traffic has grown by 374%.
- Reddit’s daily active users hit a record 97.2 million in 2024—a 47% year-over-year increase.
- In 2024, some niche communities experienced a 937,700% surge in organic traffic.
- Most Reddit pages (69%) get zero organic traffic from searches, and about 29.4% barely see any traction. Less than 0.1% actually manage to pull in more than 5,000 visits.
The Google Algorithm Changes That Boosted Reddit: An Overview
It took Reddit only one year to go from just over 90 million average monthly website visits to over 600 million organic traffic. Take a look:
As you can see from the graph, the platform used to have a relatively steady position that suddenly skyrocketed seemingly out of nowhere.
But this is no coincidence. Before I share the data I’ve gathered on how Reddit is performing in the search engine results pages (SERPs), let me give you a breakdown of the major Google updates that contributed to its rise.
August 2023 Core Update: where it all began
Core updates aim to improve search results, usually by enhancing Google’s evaluation of relevance and authority. That’s exactly what happened with the August 2023 update. Google often reminds us that when they roll out such changes, there’s no need to panic or make huge alterations to our sites. Instead, they recommend assessing your overall content helpfulness and user experience.
Many SEOs reported surprising ranking fluctuations during the rollout—lower-ranked pages were suddenly gaining visibility, while established pages lost traffic. The impact varied drastically across sectors, but one thing’s for sure—Reddit started gaining traction.
September 2023 Helpful Content Update: a shift in AI and quality focus
The next big change in SERPs was the September 2023 Helpful Content Update (HCU). The rollout for this one was quick—it began on September 14th and was completed by September 28th. However, the impact was massive.
This update was a hot topic in the SEO world. It introduced key changes, particularly around artificial intelligence (AI) and third-party materials. Google once again rewrote the rules and directly informed us they are not blocking AI-generated content. Their helpful content system was meant to boost pages that are actually useful to people.
But not everyone got lucky; some sites got slammed with heavy penalties, while others—like Reddit—rose to the top. Many experts pointed out that the affected websites were mainly producing “SEO-first” posts. This update pushed creators to make content that comes from personal experiences and share real insights instead of generic keyword-stuffed articles.
May 14, 2024: AI Overviews enter the game
The introduction of AI Overviews in SERPs earlier this year transformed the way people use Google. This new feature provides quick answers to queries without having to visit any websites after performing a search. Welcome to the zero-click internet.
This affects click-through rates (CTR) for regular organic results. Right off the bat, people noticed that when AI Overviews were shown, some sites saw their CTR drop even if their rankings stayed the same.
The new AI Overviews wasn’t the tech marvel we anticipated, though. It also gave the internet a good laugh with hilarious suggestions such as “eating one small rock a day” for good health. A lot of the factually incorrect answers actually came from Reddit posts, which were clearly not intended as serious advice. Internet users were quick to create a subreddit r/GoogleAIGoneWild where they share the humorous results of their search queries.
November 2024 Core Update: a look into the future
The most recent big change to core search functionality was rolled out in early November 2024. It is meant to stabilize SERPs following many months of volatility caused by the September 2023 HCU.
On their blog, Google shared that the main goal of this update is to continue improving SERPs by prioritizing helpful content and reducing low-quality, clickbait materials.
However, if your site was impacted, don’t expect to bounce back instantly.
Since SEO is a long-term game, it’s still too early to tell how this core update will shake things up. But like many other experts, I have noticed Google is now prioritizing user engagement over website authority.
Reddit Growth Statistics: Post-Algorithm Changes
Reddit’s surge is a direct result of Google’s adjustments that favor user-generated content (UGC), particularly from forums, over highly optimized, commercial content. According to the SISTRIX annual IndexWatch list for 2023, the website is the biggest winner when it comes to search engine traffic with 973 visibility points.
I wanted to dive deeper into these stats and find out exactly which communities took off on Google search and how this has boosted the platform’s popularity.
Here’s what I found.
Reddit organic traffic has increased by 374% in the span of a year
I started my analysis with a general outlook on the website’s growth since the August 2023 Core Update.
The data I found speaks for itself—from 142,962,019 visits in October 2023 to 677,629,382 as of the same month this year. That’s a difference of over 534.67 million (374%, to be precise) monthly visits gained from organic search.
Reddit’s recent quarterly report included a candid acknowledgment of their dependence on search platforms. They stated, “We rely, in part, on internet search engines, such as Google, to generate traffic to our website, primarily through free or organic searches.”
This admission was followed by highlighting how any volatility in the way algorithms work can drastically affect the website’s performance and—most importantly for Reddit’s stakeholders—its profitability.
Daily Reddit’s users hit 97.2 million in 2024, up by 47% year over year
The next logical step of my Reddit analysis was to check how much the website’s user base has grown.
I wasn’t surprised to find that 2024 marks the largest increase of Reddit users in the last four years.
In the third quarter of the year, the platform hit a record high of about 97.2 million daily active users (DAUs). This is an impressive jump of 47% from last year. DAUs even went over 100 million on some days, hitting new highs in user activity.
Looking at the graph below, it’s easy to tell exactly how Google’s updates boosted Reddit’s user base. For the most part, the website’s rise has been a slow and steady game until a massive spike in popularity in late 2023—right after the HCU took effect. Just look at this chart:
When before we could see even some minor falls from quarter to quarter, it’s been nothing but rapid growth this past year.
Out of all the daily Reddit visitors, 53.1 million are just browsing around without a registered account. That’s a bump of about 70% percent compared to the same quarter of 2023 when they had 31.3 million logged-out users.
The top 10 fastest growing subreddits by organic search traffic
I spent a few weeks researching which subreddits grew the fastest thanks to Google’s recent updates. During that time, I noticed that these rankings fluctuated greatly based on seasonality, current trends, holidays, and world events.
With that said, keep in mind that the below list of subreddits by popularity is a snapshot of what was trending during the time of my research. Certain topics seem to be more “evergreen” than others—the boards r/popular, r/AskReddit, and r/travel always held a spot in the top ten.
However, it was curious to see how a community can explode in popularity at the right moment.
For example, right before Halloween, the subreddit r/pumpkincarving saw a staggering 937.7% boost in visitors. It went from just 31 monthly hits in August last year to about 290,918 organic traffic visits at its peak this October. As a digital expert, when I look at these numbers, I can only see the immense potential Reddit holds for well-timed marketing campaigns.
But without further delay, here are the ten most popular subreddits with the biggest organic traffic increase since Google’s algorithm tweaks:
| Subreddit | Previous traffic | Current traffic | Traffic change | Percentage increase |
| r/popular | 35,147 | 403,906 | 368,759 | 1,049.2% |
| r/AskReddit | 20,088 | 361,479 | 341,391 | 1,699.5% |
| r/travel | 9,546 | 319,711 | 310,165 | 3,249.2% |
| r/wordle | 494 | 299,743 | 299,249 | 6,0576.7% |
| r/nfl | 275,873 | 568,728 | 292,855 | 106.2% |
| r/ChatGPT | 4,273 | 292,847 | 288,574 | 6,753.4% |
| r/IAmA | 328 | 285,038 | 284,710 | 86,801.8% |
| r/Office365 | 9,728 | 263,290 | 253,562 | 2,606.5% |
| r/nba | 367,489 | 619,869 | 252,380 | 68.7% |
| r/sex | 80,827 | 325,418 | 244,591 | 302.6% |
About 69% of Reddit’s pages fail to attract any organic traffic
Obviously, Reddit has only benefitted from the way Google changed its search engine algorithm. But some curious results stood out to me while I was doing my research.
Currently, Reddit has over 56 million indexed pages. This number grows by the minute as new user profiles, subreddits, comments, and threads get published.
However, the bulk of these pages receive absolutely no organic traffic. My Reddit research showed that 39,288,340 pages (or 69%) are either not ranking for any keywords or are not being discovered by users through search engines.
Another 16,747,908 pages (approximately 29.4%) receive minimal organic traffic, ranging anywhere between just 1 to 100 visits. They either rank for low-volume keywords or are occasionally found through niche queries.
Less than 0.1% of all pages receive over 5,000 visits. These are crude numbers, and I am sure this fluctuates constantly due to the user-centric nature of the website. But I think it’s safe to conclude that only a fraction of all content on Reddit generates any meaningful engagement.
The most popular SEO and marketing communities, according to subreddit statistics
I couldn’t miss the opportunity to see which top subreddits in my niche are doing the best right now. These communities gained extra visibility due to Google changes, and I can recommend them to brands looking to leverage Reddit’s growing popularity.
These are my choices for SEO subreddits to join right now, based on their traffic growth:
- My first pick is r/SEO, which went from 571 to 5,698 organic traffic (or a 897.90% boost) this last year. It is the most popular subreddit in the niche and currently ranks on the second page of Google for the keyword “SEO.” That’s quite impressive for a highly competitive keyword where Reddit outranks pages by reputable sources such as Yoast and Semrush. And it’s all because of Google’s updates. Just take a look at this huge spike in traffic right after the August 2024 core update:
- If you want to stick to smaller, more tight-knit communities, I suggest joining the conversation at r/bigseo, r/localseo, and r/TechSEO. These subreddits also showed significant growth and cover more specific expertise.
There are plenty of active marketing subreddits as well. The ones that have grown the most since Google changed its algorithm are:
- r/marketing is the biggest general group on the topic. The visits to this subreddit have increased by 106% in the last year.
- r/SocialMediaMarketing grew by 5,738% since August 2023. As you can tell by the name, this subreddit is all about social media tips and strategies.
- r/musicmarketing is a much more niche-specific group that is all about how to promote your music. It is the number one organic result in the SERPs for the keyword “music marketing,” which boosted its traffic by 40,100% within a year.
- r/Affiliatemarketing is a place to chat about affiliate marketing statistics, paid ads, email marketing, and anything else related to the industry. It saw an 88.5% increase in organic traffic since last August.
- r/DigitalMarketing saw a 133% traffic increase in the previous year. This is a general community for digital marketing discussions of all kinds.
- If you enter the query “product marketing” in Google, you’ll find r/ProductMarketing on the first page. This subreddit previously received no organic traffic but now gets an estimated 173 monthly visits from search engines.
- r/marketingmemes is a community for humorous posts that got a 10,100% increase in visits from Google. It lands on the first page for the keyword “marketing memes”.
The Intersection of Google and Reddit: My Perspective as an SEO Expert
At the beginning of 2024, Reddit kicked off a new chapter as a publicly traded company. In February, the platform struck a strategic deal with Google, scoring $60 million a year to let them tap into its data API. These content licensing arrangements have helped Reddit rack up a market value of $21.90 billion as of November 2024.
Many experts speculate these business moves align quite conveniently with Reddit’s rise in the SERPs. Being in the SEO industry for quite a while now, I know one of Google’s big challenges is keeping search results fresh and relevant for complex questions. Reddit serves the kind of content that users really want—genuine, experience-based insights from real people.
From what I understand, Reddit’s user base is super engaged, and that gives the content more relevance, which is exactly what Google looks for.
Will future updates tank the platform’s SEO performance? Only time will tell, but for now, there is no indication of Reddit’s rise slowing down.
Expert Opinions on Reddit’s Growth
I reached out to other digital experts in search of unbiased feedback on Reddit’s newfound popularity. Here’s what they had to say:
“Years ago Google patented a method of determining site quality that takes into account the navigational searches for a domain as a good signal of quality. What we see happening with Reddit is a combination of several things. Many users append Reddit to their query: e.g. “best TVs reddit” when looking for real user opinions or reviews. Google sees these navigational searches and it boosts Reddit’s quality. It’s exacerbated by the fact that Reddit’s internal search isn’t great – so many redditors use Google to search Reddit. I think this, plus the fact that users still click the Reddit results, is what’s driving a lot of Reddit’s success.” — Ryan Jones, Senior Vice President, SEO, Razorfish
“Google’s algorithm is increasingly focused on trust and authenticity, and Reddit is a goldmine for both. This is especially true for niche product recommendations and unfiltered user reviews. As Google refines its E-E-A-T criteria, platforms like Reddit—where users openly share their experiences—will likely become even more prominent for product-related searches.” — Matt Little, Founder and Managing Director, Festoon House
“I think they (traditional media outlets) have to accept that, at least for the time being, repurposing and diversifying traffic sources is the way to go.
That by no means is the signifier that SEO is ‘dead’ (like we hear every week at this point), but you have to see what Google is preferring as it stands, and if you’re in a niche that is being dominated by UGC then diversification is best for the time being at least.
I feel like there has to be a point where these sites start to drop in terms of organic visibility.
Particularly for many bloggers and niche website owners who were unfairly hit by the helpful content updates, otherwise they’re just never going to want to put the same level of SEO effort into their site if all they’re being rewarded with is volatility. And who can blame them?” — James Taylor, SEO Strategist, Embryo
Final Thoughts
Google’s changing algorithm propelled Reddit from a niche hobby discussion board to a hotspot for online communities. Now, it’s up to Reddit to keep that momentum going. If they nail it, the website could serve as an example to other social networks on how to position themselves as a trusted source of information.
Meanwhile, independent bloggers must hone their unique experiences and voices to stand out in the SERPs. Reddit’s rise shows just how important community-driven engagement is. For small creators, this means focusing on finding your tribe online for better connections and search visibility.
References
- https://s203.q4cdn.com/380862485/files/doc_financials/2024/q3/Q3-24-Shareholder-Letter.pdf
- https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001713445/3b378252-da7b-4f74-9ace-d6c8630bdaae.pdf
- https://investor.redditinc.com/news-events/news-releases/news-details/2024/Reddit-Announces-Third-Quarter-2024-Results/
- https://companiesmarketcap.com/reddit/marketcap/
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Article by
Nikola Baldikov