Some in the SEO industry have been asking if Google has been showing fewer links in its search results to Reddit over the past several weeks. So Mordy Obserstein pulled some Semrush data that showed a slight downtick in Reddit results in Google’s Discussion and Forums section.
Earlier this month, Mordy asked on X, “Is it me or is Google finally starting to throw a more diverse offering of forums into the ‘Discussion and forums’ feature on the SERP?” Some agreed:
Anecdotally seeing Reddit less on my end.
— Brian Freiesleben v2 (@type_SEO) June 5, 2024
So he showed the data he just received from Semrush which showed a slight downtick in Reddit showing up in Google Search.
Mordy posted on X some of the charts and data and wrote, “There is a slight yet consistent downward trend in both Reddit and Quora URLs being used in the SERP feature. Conversely, other forums have seen the inverse trend and are seeing more placement.”
Here is that trend:
You can see Reddit is down month to month to month only so slightly, the same with Quora but other forums are seeing a slight uptick.
So is this a major change? Nah. But Mordy added, “However, the trend does continue across other data points. For example, the number of Discussion and Forum features with multiple Reddit URLs is also down slightly over the past months.”
Here is that chart:
And some more food (I mean forums) for thought:
For the record, here is the market share for the top 15 forums beyond Reddit and Quora within the SERP feature.
Only @Tripadvisor gets over 1% of market share – which I guess kinda makes sense since there are so many verticals on the web dealing with so many different… pic.twitter.com/1JpU7EjN73
— Mordy Oberstein *This guy’s still here? C’mon man* (@MordyOberstein) June 19, 2024
It would be nice to see less Reddit but I am not confident we will see a huge decline in Reddit showing in Google Search anytime soon. I do think it will happen eventually but not this soon… I mean, Google is paying Reddit for the content and believes it is valuable.
Forum discussion at X.
