Reddit is going logged-in only. Blame Google AI Overviews.

Reddit announced on Thursday that it volition shortly commencement being a (mostly) logged-in-only experience, citing declining hunt traffic as among the reasons. Redditors, who are famously level-headed and open to change, reacted about how you would expect.

In an earnings call, CEO Steve Huffman stated that Google's AI Overviews "are not traffic drivers"," and that "Google has really shifted in their association alongside the remainder of the internet."

It wasn't so lengthy ago — June 2024 — that I wrote an part alongside the header "Reddit's traffic is way, way up. Like, banoodles up."

Things have changed a lot in those two abbreviated years!

Here's what happened rear in 2024. Reddit was going public, and fair made a deal alongside Google to licence gazillions of posts for Google's AI training. Reddit's hunt traffic was additionally way, way up.

It saw a 39% addition in traffic from May 2023 to May 2024, according to web analytics resolute Similarweb. This was a period duration anywhere another social companies saw much slower growth (and Facebook equal slightly declined). Much of that was since of Google hunt traffic.

But that was 2024. People were lone tentatively trying out these newfangled AI services akin ChatGPT as a possible hunt replacement. Google had fair launched its AI Overviews in hunt results in May 2024, and they didn't appear extremely helpful — it told people to put glue in their pizza, following all.

Fast onward to 2026, and group are much additional comfortable using AI services akin ChatGPT alternatively of Googling. You can ask Muse to shop for the finest air conditioner for you and equal create the purchase. Google AI overviews have gotten way, way better, making it so you rarely have to really click on a website to get your answer. Thanks to all this, hunt traffic has tanked throughout the complete internet. Plenty of publishers conversation concerning "Google Zero," bracing for Google referral traffic to completely base out.

Reddit, equal alongside the agreement it cut alongside Google, is experiencing the fact that hunt traffic is uncomplicated come, uncomplicated go.

Huffman stated in a letter to shareholders stated that hunt traffic was "down meaningfully in Q3," and that in October it dropped by complete 1 myriad referrals per week on average, and if the trend continued, it could see "a low-double-digit percent from our current basis of 130 million" regular energetic distinctive visits.

It's not all bad news, though. Reddit reported $895 million, which was an addition of 53% year-over-year. Its concentration is on the logged-in person experience, which is additional lucrative for advertising, since users can be additional targeted. In the earnings call, Huffman noted that 80% of Reddit's monetization happens alongside app users and logged-in users.

There's item sad concerning Reddit becoming a semi-closed system; the end of an era of the open web — item that Reddit helped pioneer (and its co-founder Aaron Swartz was passionate about).

On Reddit, Huffman posted a message addressing the alter to users: "I don't cognize concerning you, but as person whose existence has been defined by the open internet, it's a big alter for me. But I've arrive to the decision that this is the correct decision for our phase and the correct decision for our business."