Reddit CEO Says Google’s AI Mode Has Cut Search Referrals by Over 1 Million Per Week
Reddit says Google still crawls its content at the same rate, but AI Mode and AI Overviews contributed to a drop of over 1 million search referrals per week in October 2026. CEO Steve Huffman says Reddit is building a direct, daily destination.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said during an October 29, 2026 earnings call that Google’s AI-powered search features are not sending users to Reddit — or to other websites — the way traditional search once did. The comments came as part of Reddit’s Q3 2026 earnings, which revealed that search traffic in October dropped by more than one million referrals on average per week.
Huffman attributed the decline in part to Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews, which he says have fundamentally changed how search works. “The reality is, AI Mode does not drive traffic,” Huffman said. “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 added that these AI features now, at a minimum, push “everyone down the search page.”
Huffman also said Reddit believes its machine-translated content is being ranked lower in search results, an issue he said would primarily affect the company outside the United States.
Despite the drop in referrals, Huffman noted that Reddit remains a top search term on Google and that user demand for the platform has not disappeared. “People still want Reddit,” he said. “It says Google is not sending them to Reddit the way they used to.” He also pointed out that Google continues to crawl Reddit’s content at the same rate as before.
To address the decline in search-driven traffic, Reddit is working to build the platform into a direct, daily destination for users. The company introduced a “For You” interest-based recommendation feed on October 28, 2026, and began testing AI-generated short videos from posts in August. Reddit also announced it will require all users to log in, with Huffman citing benefits for user experience, advertising, safety compliance, and data protection.
The traffic concerns are not limited to Reddit. Google itself acknowledged yesterday that it is seeing lower ad monetization within AI Mode, though it is expanding AI ads to additional countries.