Reddit’s CEO says Google’s AI Mode ‘does not drive traffic’

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in an earnings call today that Google’s AI-powered search modes do not help with traffic to the platform, echoing problems facing other websites and publishers. As part of its Q3 2026 earnings, Reddit revealed that search traffic in October has “dropped by more than 1 million referrals on average per week,” and he attributes part of the company’s struggles with Google traffic to how AI Mode and AI Overviews change the search experience.

“The reality is, AI Mode does not drive traffic,” Huffman says. “Not for us, and not to anybody, as far as I know. That’s just a fundamental shift in how Google works. It used to be a traffic driver, now it’s not.”

He says that AI Overviews and AI Mode have “evolved a lot” and now, at a “minimum,” push “everyone down the search page.” Huffman also says that Reddit believes its content that’s machine-translated into other languages is being ranked lower in search results, which he says would primarily affect the company outside the US.

However, Reddit is still a “top search term in Google,” Huffman says. “This doesn’t say anything about the internet consumers’ demand for Reddit. People still want Reddit. It says Google is not sending them to Reddit the way they used to.” He also says that Google is “crawling us as hard as ever, so the demand hasn’t changed from their point of view, either.”

(Google’s business has been affected by AI Mode, too: it said yesterday that it’s seeing “lower monetization” in AI Mode ads, though it’s now bringing AI ads to more countries.)

To try and combat the search referral difficulties, Reddit is working to make the platform a “direct, sticky, daily destination.” Yesterday, it introduced a “For You” feed with recommendations related to your interests, and in August, it started testing an experiment that uses AI to turn posts into short videos.

Reddit also announced today that it’s going to force everyone to log in, which Huffman claims will be “better for user experience, better for our ads business, is more in line with safety regulations, and more protective of Reddit data.”

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