Google has announced a deal with Reddit to gain access to its content using the Reddit Data API reportedly worth $60 million annually. Yes, Google is paying Reddit to get access to its publicly available content through an API that should make it faster for Google to consume and show us all that content. Not that any of us want to see Reddit content show up in Google Search...
I know this is not just about Google Search but also Gemini and its AI being able to learn from Reddit content - but the point is still the same - it is Reddit!
Google wrote, "Over the years, we’ve seen that people increasingly use Google to search for helpful content on Reddit to find product recommendations, travel advice and much more." Um, only because you are showing it to us in Google Search. If you read any of the recent complaints about Google Search, you would see people are sick of seeing Reddit for every query.
"This partnership will facilitate more content-forward displays of Reddit information that will make our products more helpful for our users and make it easier to participate in Reddit communities and conversations," Google wrote. Google added, "To enable these and other experiences, Google now has access to Reddit’s Data API, which delivers real-time, structured, unique content from their large and dynamic platform. With the Reddit Data API, Google will now have efficient and structured access to fresher information, as well as enhanced signals that will help us better understand Reddit content and display, train on, and otherwise use it in the most accurate and relevant ways."
Get this, Google said "This expanded partnership does not change Google's use of publicly available, crawlable content for indexing, training, or display in Google products."
Sure, so Google was able to access this content anyway, content that most of you, (and probably most searchers knowingly) do not want anyway.
I suspect this deal was in the works during the hidden gems moments. I mean, I am shocked Google even posted about this on their blog, after seeing all the bad PR around Reddit dominating Google Search. I mean, Reddit is dominating Google's search results. It was fine to have a sprinkling of it like we did in 2016 but it is a bit too much right now.
Here is some of the SEO industry reaction to this news:
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— Darth Autocrat (Lyndon NA) (@darth_na) February 22, 2024
: So ... I was wrong :
I was thinking G were going to kill Reddit off in the SERPs, after making people sick to death of the crap content and irrelevant results.
Instead ... G are paying Reddit for access,
to train their AI models.@sundarpichai - where's our money?#SEO https://t.co/u4x8rMj0Gv
It's like watching a slow motion wreck in real time...
— Julie F Bacchini (@NeptuneMoon) February 22, 2024
Have you been on Reddit? Some great stuff, lots of insane, inaccurate & terrible stuff. But sure, train away on that Google.
Maybe it will start telling people if they are the a-hole after their prompts???? https://t.co/dOjSiHX0jC
Google to use reddit to train #AI is such a terrible idea even redditors agree 💀 https://t.co/AGGroOYteS pic.twitter.com/htk43RhLbv
— Len (@lenraleigh) February 22, 2024
This industry feels like such a joke right now. 😑 https://t.co/diGzOU2PhV
— Rebekah Edwards (@rebekah_creates) February 22, 2024
I'm sure this had nothing to do with Reddit suddenly ranking for every term on the internet for the last ~6 weeks. https://t.co/UdDICjQdPh
— Grind Stone (@GrindstoneSEO) February 22, 2024
https://t.co/PdL37vKoVh pic.twitter.com/QyMmB9GQcW
— Jessica Flareau (@jflareau) February 22, 2024
Users, SEOs, tech journalists covering search: Those forum results, in particular the excess of Reddit in top search results for all those queries are so bad, spammy and don’t make sense. Make it stop.
— Aleyda Solis 🕊️ (@aleyda) February 23, 2024
Google: 👇 pic.twitter.com/1y3eP6HRHp
That is just a sprinkling of the feedback on this deal.
FYI, all this happened hours before Reddit filed for an IPO.
Forum discussion at X.
