Reddit Is No Longer Just a Nerd Forum. It's an AI Visibility Lever.

In 2023, Andrew Shotland barely said the word Reddit. By 2025, if you'd done a word frequency count on his vocabulary, Reddit would have been in the top 10.

Andrew is founder of Local SEO Guide, and he's been experimenting with Reddit seriously. He even hired a spam company, acquired a thousand fake accounts, and ran a controlled test to see what Reddit brand mentions actually do to AI overview visibility.

The results were featured in our February webinar on Reddit for SEO, and this article covers what he found. Think of it as your humble guide to Reddit for SEO (or AI search).

(Full disclosure: I started my own JavaScript SEO subreddit last year after a chat with Andrew at SEO San Diego—so I have some skin in this game too.)

Why Reddit has become impossible to ignore

First, some stats.

In 2024, “reddit” was the sixth most searched term on Google in the US. The site appears in 37% of Google SERPs and features in 95% of product review queries. In fact, according to Reddit's CEO, people arrived at Reddit from Google 23 billion times in the past year.

You've probably noticed this yourself. Google's suggested searches almost always add "Reddit" to product queries now. Best iPhone case Reddit. Best comedy movies Reddit. How to do SEO Reddit. The human race has been conditioned to look for stuff on Reddit, and they use Google to find it.

Two things explain Reddit's dominance in Google:

1. The 2024 data deal in which Google licensed Reddit's content to train Gemini (and, most people believe, boosted Reddit's search visibility as part of that arrangement).

2. Reddit appears to be genuinely useful. (According to Reddit's own research, 77% of users turn to the platform to consider purchase options. It's less like reviews and more like eavesdropping on a conversation between people who actually bought the thing.)

But the stat that should really get SEOs' attention comes from Profound: Reddit is consistently one of the most cited sources in both Google AI overviews and ChatGPT. So if your brand or topic is being discussed on Reddit, there's a very real chance it's feeding directly into what AI systems say about you.

The AI visibility experiment

Now it gets juicy.

Andrew wanted to know whether brand mentions on Reddit would directly affect AI overview citation rates. So he hired a spam company (yep, he went there), got access to a thousand Reddit accounts, and ran a one-month campaign for a SaaS client: 100 brand mentions and 100 comments in relevant threads.

“We basically hired one of these spam companies and said, hey, give me a thousand accounts. I want to basically get 100 brand mentions and 100 comments in relevant threads over a month for a SaaS company we're working with. I spammed Reddit on your behalf so you don't have to.”

Andrew Shotland   CEO, Local SEO Guide

They tracked the brand across 80 prompts in Google AI overviews, measuring how often it was cited. Before the test, it was roughly 8-9% of prompts. Within a couple of weeks of starting the experiment, it was approximately 3x that. Then when they stopped, it went straight back down to where it started.

They've run this test several times. The results are consistent.

We can draw two conclusions:

1. Brand mentions on Reddit are a meaningful factor in AI overview visibility

2. The important caveat: the effect disappears the moment you stop, so constant spamming is not the answer, building a strong brand so the mentions happen organically is.

Andrew also mentioned research that Lily Ray published around the same time, showing organic search rankings influence AI visibility too: ChatGPT uses Google search results as one of its data sources. So none of this operates in isolation. Reddit mentions, organic rankings, authoritative citations: they're all part of the same system.

The forums tab

In Google's search results filters, there's a "Forums" tab that surfaces the top-ranking forum threads for any query. Most SEOs don't know this tab exists. Andrew's team believes it's essentially a map of the URLs Google is using to train its AI. If a thread is ranking in that tab for your target keywords, it's very likely in the data pool informing AI overview responses.

Check it for your most important keywords. Those are the threads you want your brand mentioned in.

How Reddit's algorithm works

Reddit is organised into subreddits. These are topic communities, covering everything from cities to music groups to JavaScript SEO (*wink).

Each subreddit has moderators who set and enforce the rules, which is a big reason Reddit has stayed relatively spam-resistant. Mods take this very seriously.

Posts start in the "new" feed and move through "rising" into "hot", with "best" being the default view most users see. The algorithm weighs upvotes, comments, cross-posts, and downvotes. Downvotes carry more weight than upvotes, so y’know, don’t make people hate you.

Comments matter most. Multiple people responding to each other under a post is the signal the algorithm responds to most strongly.

The 6-10 hour window

“You basically have six to ten hours after the post was made to really get the thing prominent in your subreddit. That doesn't mean it won't rank after the fact. But that's really the sweet spot. If you can get a lot of activity going in six to ten hours, you have a much better chance of the post showing up at the top of the subreddit…and for Google to show it as one of its recommended links.”

Andrew Shotland   CEO, Local SEO Guide

Google indexes Reddit posts within a couple of hours. But posts don't rank for anything meaningful until they've accumulated substantial comments, and the algorithm weights early engagement heavily. If you're investing effort in a post, you need a plan to drive early activity.

Karma

Karma is Reddit's gamified point system. You earn it for posting, commenting, and getting replies. When someone clicks through to your profile after engaging with your content, karma is one of the first things they see. Low karma reads as a new or fake account, so it’s important to get that karma score up.

Mine is sadly still pitiful.

How to get your brand on Reddit

Andrew laid out several approaches depending on how much time and resource you're willing to invest.

1. Create your own subreddit

The most ambitious option is to create a subreddit around your topic area, the subject matter your audience cares about.

Andrew did this with Local SEO for AI. Each post took about three minutes to create. A short paragraph, a link, maybe an image, then after about 10 posts, Reddit started surfacing the subreddit in its search for relevant topics. Within two to three weeks, it had over 100 members and over 1,000 visits.

I started the r/javascriptseo_ subreddit towards the end of November last year and experienced a similar trajectory:

The catch, as I well know, is consistency.

Reddit's algorithm surfaces active communities in search, so if you're not posting, you stop appearing. It’s a commitment, for sure.

That said, there's a practical solution: recruit moderators from within your community. I've done this with the JavaScript SEO subreddit, bringing in SEO experts like Tory Gray to help; it keeps the workload manageable and makes the community better at the same time.

A few principles for launching a subreddit:

• Populate it with content before you start promoting it.

• Design and tag it properly. A well-presented subreddit looks more credible. (I need to do a bit more work on mine…)

• Post consistently, even when traffic is low. Consistency is what gets you surfaced in Reddit search.

2. Claim a dormant subreddit

There are plenty of subreddits on Reddit that were created years ago and have since been abandoned. Andrew suggests tasking someone with auditing every subreddit on your topic and identifying the dormant ones.

If you find one on your topic that's been inactive for a year or more, apparently you can apply to take it over. Contact the original moderator directly, or go through Reddit's mod community if nobody responds.

3. Brand ambassador accounts

Simpler than building a subreddit: create a branded account (or employee account representing the brand) and use it to participate in existing communities.

The plumber AMA is Andrew's go-to example. A plumber goes into their local city subreddit periodically and posts: "I'm a skilled plumber with some time right now, ask me anything." Every time, they get flooded with questions. People want free advice. And occasionally someone messages about an actual job.

If the thread picks up enough engagement, it starts appearing in Google for "plumber in [city]", showcasing someone offering that service who’s actually been helpful to dozens of people.

4. Repurpose existing content

“Oh great, yet another channel I have to create content for!”

Believe me, I understand them feels. But you don't need to create new content, you just need to repurpose what you’ve got.

Andrew's approach for clients is to take existing website content and rewrite it for Reddit: lead with the most interesting finding, add an emotional or opinionated headline, and be willing to take a position. The Reddit gods love that.

Don't link directly to your own site if you can help it. In most subreddits, self-promotion = spam. Andrew's workaround is to publish the content on a third-party platform like Medium first, then link to that.

Your profile is the conversion

Whatever approach you take, the actual conversion usually happens on your profile, not in the comments. When someone engages with your content and gets curious about you, they click through. So your profile needs to answer their questions: who you are, what you do, links to your site and social. Treat it like a landing page.

“Trust the user enough to go and look at your profile, where all the links and marketing stuff is. Don't need to put your link in my face unless it's appropriate to the conversation. Because Reddit doesn't dislike marketers. It hates spammy marketers.”

Andrew Shotland   CEO, Local SEO Guide

One more thing: Reddit conversations stay up indefinitely. A thread that ranks well in a year is one you can go back and add a link to. You don't have to be promotional at the time of the conversation.

Real-world local SEO example: The Admiral Pub

Andrew's favourite real-world example involves a pub in Seattle. The owner put a page on his site called "watch Premier League in Seattle" and did nothing else. No Reddit posts, no social promotion.

What happened: People on Facebook groups and Reddit started mentioning the Admiral Pub organically whenever someone asked where to watch Premier League in Seattle. The pub had done absolutely NOTHING on Reddit themselves. But because people kept mentioning them, they started appearing in AI overviews, as a citation source in AI search, and at the top of Google's organic results.

You can do all the link building you want, but for local businesses especially, brand mentions in community spaces are becoming one of the most important visibility signals there is.

The authenticity thing isn't just ethics

Reddit has a whole ecosystem for gaming it. You can go to signals.sh and buy upvotes, comments, and aged accounts. In fact, Andrew estimates that 95% of what agencies sell as "Reddit marketing" is artificial engagement using banks of old accounts.

He knows because he hired one of those companies.

The practical problem with fake engagement, beyond the obvious, is that it's fragile. Reddit's spam detection has improved significantly; multiple accounts from the same IP, similar posting patterns, comment behaviour that doesn't match account history: all ban triggers.

Even genuine comments and questions posted to my JavaScript SEO subreddit have been flagged to me by Reddit as possible spam. I have to review and approve them myself.

Honestly, a good rule of thumb for Reddit is the same as most marketing: be genuine, be helpful.

Is Reddit useful for B2B?

In a word, yes.

The assumption that Reddit is a B2C platform just doesn't hold up. Andrew's working with an AI observability SaaS company targeting CIOs—and there are literally subreddits where CIOs do nothing but discuss CIO problems.

That said, Reddit isn't necessarily always the right channel. SparkToro is worth using before you commit to see where your target audience hangs out online. For some audiences it's Reddit. For others it's Quora, LinkedIn groups, or a niche industry forum. The principles Andrew covered in this webinar apply equally to those communities too.

Customer engagement is the new SEO

Andrew's closing thesis was interesting: at some point in the not-too-distant future, his agency will stop being an SEO agency and become a customer engagement agency that does SEO.

Going into the places where your customers are having conversations, participating authentically, and getting them to talk about you is what's moving the needle now in both organic search and AI visibility.

Most of your competition isn't doing this. Social media management is still mostly broadcasting. Actually showing up in subreddits and being useful is still rare enough to be a genuine advantage.

The content to do it with already exists on your site. It just needs to live somewhere else too.

TL;DR key takeaways

💡 Reddit appears in 37% of Google SERPs and is consistently one of the most cited sources in AI overviews—it's a direct AI visibility lever, not just a traffic channel.

💡 Andrew's brand mention experiment produced a 3x increase in AI overview citation rates. The effect disappeared when the campaign stopped.

💡 Comments are the most powerful Reddit ranking signal. You have a 6-10 hour window after posting to generate enough activity to give your post a real chance of ranking in the subreddit and in Google.

💡 Your Reddit profile is where conversion happens. Engage authentically, let people get curious, and make your profile worth clicking through to.

💡 The Google forums tab is likely a map of the URLs feeding AI training data. Check it for your most important keywords—those are the threads to get your brand mentioned in.

💡 Most competitors still aren't doing this. The opportunity for early movers is still open!