Reddit has revealed it is the number one most cited domain for AI across all models, according to data collected by analytics platform Profound, beating publishers including Youtube, forbes.com, techradar.com and pcmag.com.
It was cited twice as often as Wikipedia in the top ten most cited domains across AI in the three months ending 30 June, 2025, the platform said.
While Chatgpt’s top source was named as Wikipedia by Profound, both Google AI Overviews and Perplexity were AI models that relied most on Reddit as a source.
The results were published in Reddit’s Q2 shareholder letter, which also revealed that more than 70 million people now use its on-platform search each week.
“We’re concentrating our resources on the areas that will drive results for our most pressing needs: improving the core product, making Reddit a go-to search engine, and expanding internationally,” said Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO of Reddit, in the letter.
While some publishers have signed deals with AI companies which commonly include the use of their content as reference points for user queries in tools like ChatGPT (with citation back to their websites currently promised), others are opting out – even suing – AI companies over unauthorised use of their content.
[Read more: Who’s suing AI and who’s signing: Gannett signs up with Perplexity]
David Buttle, founder of media and tech consultancy DJB strategies, said: “Reddit’s on-site search remains tiny. Its search’s 70 million weekly-active-users need to be seen alongside Google handling around 14 billion queries a day; that’s almost two searches for every human on the planet.
“In this context, Reddit’s focus on becoming a search platform poses a limited threat to publisher traffic, beyond perhaps outlets creating product / review content in narrowly defined niches, such as PC hardware or audio equipment.
“The far bigger concern for UK publishers is Google’s roll-out of AI Mode which threatens to substantially erode traffic and for which content creators cannot opt-out without damaging prominence in general search.”
‘Essential’ for training LLMs
Reddit said its content is “essential for training” LLMs and AI search engines, as well as the “backbone of building AI”.
This means its data will play a role in how AI answers questions. Reddit’s content is authored by the general public – though users must verify their age before signing up.
However, information and opinions are not fact-checked before being published, meaning information being cited by AI models might not be accurate.
“In a world increasingly dominated by algorithms and automation, the need for human voices has never been greater,” Huffman said.
“[Sixty] million seekers land on Reddit in search of better answers to their questions. In fact, ~80% of users in a recent survey [by Reddit] said they believe some questions can only be answered by humans, as opposed to AI-generated summaries.”
However, Buttle said Reddit’s “conversational content” is “necessary but not sufficient” to create performant AI chatbots.
“The process of training, fine-tuning then deploying an AI system such that it can answer questions about the world today also requires proper journalism, created according to editorial standards and which can be trusted to be accurate.
“AI developers give this type of material additional weighting in the development process and will access these websites in real-time when required by a prompt.”
In June, Daily Beast editor in chief Joanna Coles said growing referral traffic from Reddit and Facebook had made up for falling referrals from Google.
[Read more: Reddit tips from Metro: ‘It’s trial and error… You’re probably going to get banned’]
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