Reddit is an online forum platform with a mixed structure: a combination of a social network, classic forums, and a news aggregator. Users publish content in subreddits (thematic communities, e.g., r/technology, r/AskReddit), fostering a strong community.
Voting system: upvotes/downvotes determine what gets promoted, contributing to users’ karma points.
Content = 99% UGC (user-generated content), which can be used to train AI models.
Huge “long tail” length – meaning there’s a thread for any question, even very niche ones, answered by real people.
Authority among “techies”, gamers, investors, and members of various communities – an audience that Google, the largest shareholder, is also interested in.
This isn’t journalism or news expertise in the traditional sense. It’s collective subjectivity among reddit users that, at the same time, is indexed better than a lot of normal websites and advanced publications around the world.
Official stance: “People want to hear real stories, experiences, live answers.” Plus: Content with a “human touch” better answers queries like:
“what laptop to choose in 2025?“
“which VPN works in Turkey?“
“what do people think about the new Tesla?“
Forums generate unique content on the web without SEO optimization, making it accessible to third party apps and various tools so it looks “more honest.”
Google fears that search results will turn into pure ChatGPT / Gemini generation, where everything is the same. They want “anti-control” – live opinions from the network.
Google also has a bad history with MFA sites that push tons of junk into search results, often generated by bots. Forums are supposedly “more honest.”
It’s all simple and dirty here: One giant, one API – is Reddit owned by Google? Google gets access to all forum knowledge through one point. No need to scrape, or struggle with crawl budgets.
Data quality:
Reddit has a clear hierarchy of threads, answers, upvotes, and reflects the latest updates – it’s easy to read what the “top” answers are.
The data structure is understandable for ML (machine learning models), allowing for the extraction of useful information.
Reddit monetization before IPO:
Reddit was going public and needed to show new sources of income.
$60 million/year from Google – a strong argument for investors.
Other forums don’t have such scale:
Stack Overflow is too technical.
Quora is cluttered with AI content.
Men’s Health forum or AVForums are too niche.
Reddit has everything: from crypto to cooking.
In February 2024, Reddit signed a one-year contract for $60 million with Google, with the following terms:
API access to all Reddit content:
Including posts, comments, upvotes, publication dates, etc.
This isn’t just indexing – it’s structured data, ideal for training models.
Permission to use content for AI training (Google Gemini):
Reddit publicly admitted that this is part of the agreement for Google to gain access to its cont.
This means Google pays to feed its LLMs with live human discussions.
Priority index and insertion into SERP (Search Engine Results Page):
Reddit links now dominate search for info-queries.
Even SGE (AI answers in search) inserts Reddit as a source.
Is the contract exclusive? – unofficially no, but only Reddit has such “hothouse” conditions.
Google publicly doesn’t admit manipulation, but the results speak for themselves – Reddit has pushed out most independent sites.
Reddit blocks scraping for other AI companies (like OpenAI), but not for Google – another element of the game.
This contract is a template for the future. Expect Quora, Stack Overflow, and even Facebook groups to start selling APIs/data for AI.
After the agreement with Google in 2024, Reddit content began appearing en masse at the top of search results – even for queries that didn’t require a discussion format. Simply adding the word “reddit” or “twitter to a google search query guarantees pretty good Reddit links in the top 3, and often in the first position. Queries like “best laptop 2024 reddit” or “how to fix screen flickering reddit” consistently favor forum threads from Reddit, even if they don’t provide expert value.
Google SGE (AI Overviews), currently being tested in the US, also actively pulls Reddit as a primary source of “people’s opinions” – often without filtering or prioritizing verified sources. This cemented Reddit’s role as a de facto search parasite: a platform with UGC content displaces sites with actual production content – niche blogs, review media, expert portals.
This isn’t just a distortion of ranking logic – it’s a shift in algorithm priorities, which now interprets “mass opinion” as more relevant than expertise.
What’s important is that this model really has an impact even at the micro-level. In 2024, SEO specialist Joy Hawkins conducted an experiment: by creating a relevant Reddit post with a nofollow link, she recorded a site’s position increase from 25th to 10th place in just two weeks. The reason – the Reddit post itself received organic traffic and ranked in Google, creating an indexing “pool” around the link.
This fits into a proven practice that has worked since 2019 and remains relevant in 2025:
Parasitic SEO: — Publications on trusted platforms (Reddit, Quora, Medium) — SEO press releases on aggregators — Revived Web 2.0 blogs — Google Sites / Docs SEO — Forum SEO through authoritative discussion platforms — LinkedIn Articles as info-content hubs
Pro-tip: Google prioritizes authoritative domains – use their trustworthiness instead of waiting for months for a young site to break into search results. Is Reddit owned by Google in this sense? Reddit today is one of the most powerful “authorities” that can be legally exploited.
After the agreement between Google and Reddit in 2024, many sites that had held top positions in search results for years lost their rankings. This happened because Google began to prioritize content from Reddit members , even if it wasn’t always high quality or expert. For example, the HouseFresh website, which specializes in air purifier reviews, experienced a significant drop in traffic after Google’s algorithm updates, leading to a decrease in its search visibility.
This shift in traffic balance is critical because:
Traffic balance shift: Many sites lost organic search positions due to Reddit’s preference, which is considered wrong. This led to a decrease in traffic and revenue for many niche resources.
Low quality of Reddit content: On average, Reddit content is not written journalism or analysis in discussion forums , and many users can only guess but often consists of subjective or biased user opinions. This can lead to the spread of unverified or inaccurate information.
Lack of preferences for other forums: Other forums do not have such preferences because they do not have agreements with Google. This creates unequal conditions for different platforms and distorts competition in search results.
Google has effectively nullified decades of “classic” SEO logic that professionals had built for years – by: understanding ranking factors, creating structured content, technical optimization, long-term accumulation of trust, backlinks, and expertise, while also being wary of bots.
Is Reddit owned by Google? In search results, Reddit wins, where: there is neither authorship nor expertise, content is often just a stream of opinions, trust signals are upvotes and comments, not external links or structure.
Google suddenly says: “We trust Reddit as a representative of ‘collective opinion,’ even if this content is superficial, subjective, and without any quality guarantee.” 📌 That is – yes. Google reset part of the rule system that it itself forced to follow for years. And those who invested in expert content, technical SEO, authority – got stabbed in the back. This is like saying in chess after 20 years: “Knights now move in a straight line – adapt.” This situation emphasizes the need to reconsider approaches to SEO and adapt to the new realities of search optimization, where domain authority and partnership agreements can be crucial for search visibility.
The situation with Reddit is very similar to how UGC platforms (like Quora, Medium, LinkedIn Articles) and MFA (made-for-ads) sites parasitize on queries with informational intent. They don’t create unique value, but use the trust of their domains to hack search results: rank for LSI queries, shoot up to positions 3-5 effortlessly, and intercept traffic that once belonged to normal sites.
But the key difference – is Reddit owned by Google in a deeper sense? Reddit received official blessing from Google in the form of direct API integration. This isn’t just “we parasitize within the rules” – it’s “we are part of the system.” Quora and Medium are still on the sidelines. Reddit is already in the salon.
Until recently, affiliate SEO in gambling relied on proven schemes: satellites, advanced doorways, PBN networks, and content projects with years of trust. Giants like Gambling.com Group, Catena Media, Gentoo Media invested millions in structure, domains, backlinks, and content under the direction of their ceo. The same goes for solo SEO: dozens of specialists built networks on Webflow, WordPress, even custom CMS. But now all this can be bypassed through a single Reddit post.
Two striking examples: 🔗 best slots to play 🔗 what’s your go-to online slot
Both threads have nothing to do with SEO or optimization – these are ordinary posts in the /r/gambling subreddit, without structured content, without keywords in tags or meta descriptions. But the result: position #1 or #5 in Google for juicy queries “best slots to play” and “best online slots.” And this is in the US and UK – the hottest GEOs.
This means that: A Reddit post can rank higher than a site with tens of thousands in investments. And you don’t even have to be an SEO specialist.
How to implement this: Buy Reddit accounts (old or with artificial authority). Buy upvotes (there are dozens of exchanges, like Upvote.()Shop, RedditBoost, etc.). Use an anti-detect browser (e.g., Dolphin, AdsPower) and residential proxies. Publish a question or discussion on the desired topic – with the right words in the title. Keep the post alive, upvote, add comments – and Google will do everything for you.
No title optimization, no schema(.)org, sitemap.xml, noindex/index – all this is completely irrelevant when there’s Reddit with an API agreement and algorithmic favoritism from Google. That’s why experienced SEOs are fuming: because their toolkit, built over decades, now yields to a simple forum post with two upvotes. This is not an algorithm change, it’s a log game change.
Reddit – a UGC forum that, thanks to a $60 million contract with Google in 2024, received full API access for integration and various tools for content management. From now on, all its content is used for AI training, improving search results, and direct ranking – outside of usual SEO rules.
Search results are increasingly shifting towards “human opinions” rather than facts, which are related to the presence of UGC. Google fears total AI content and is looking for a “live source.” Reddit is ideal: massive UGC, upvotes as a signal, structured threads. And, most importantly – a centralized API.
StackOverflow is too narrow. Quora is toxic. Medium is unstructured, making Reddit stand out among other search engines. Reddit is the golden mean: from crypto to cooking. And most importantly – Reddit sold out. And that became its “ticket” into search results. This directly answers the question is Reddit owned by Google in terms of data.
Posts from subreddits now overtake sites with years of history. The reason – Google pulls Reddit even into SGE, ranks threads without meta-data, and prefers “opinions” instead of analytics. Joy Hawkins showed: even nofollow links from Reddit can push a site to the top if the thread ranks.
Content site owners, publishers, affiliate SEOs lose traffic after every update. Sites that were built for 5-10 years yield to simple Reddit posts. This is a complete change of priorities: from structure – to impulse, leaving behind the garbage of traditional SEO.
Just as Quora, Medium, or LinkedIn Articles once parasitized through domain trust, now Reddit does it officially and with impunity. This is no longer manipulation – it’s strategic integration. And if you’re not on the side of big platforms – you’ve lost.
Examples of threads ranking for “best slots to play” prove: today you can get to the top for a Tier1 query without a site. Just buy upvotes, an account, make a post, and maintain the dialogue. No need to wait for indexing, links, DA anymore – Google will pull Reddit itself.
We officially live in an era where SEO is not about websites, but about platforms. If you’re not part of a large ecosystem (is Reddit owned by Google in this sense? Yes, it’s integrated), like Reddit, Quora, YouTube, Medium, you either parasitize through them or disappear. The algorithm isn’t interested in your experience, backlinks, schema. It’s interesting – are you like Reddit? And if you are ready to work with the new rules of the game – then we, RevDuck Partners, will gladly accept your Reddit satellites for a profitable deal in Tier-1 markets. Just visit our website and let’s get to work.
