Reddit Set to Enhance Search with AI-Powered Expansion

This year, Reddit, the social media giant, is set to enhance its search experience, making it easier for users to navigate the platform and find answers to complex queries more efficiently.

Reddit was founded in 2005 by entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian and platform CEO Steve Huffman. It is well-known for its many specialized discussion groups.

According to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, the update would incorporate “Reddit Answers,” a function that summarises relevant replies and threads, into the current search interface.

According to Huffman, the firm is currently trying to decipher the vast amount of data that has been amassed on Reddit over the last two decades.

“We’re starting to tap into this massive corpus of information with Answers,” Huffman stated on Reddit’s Q4 2024 earnings call.

To back up this effort, Reddit is assembling a search team of engineers, as pointed out by CFO Drew Vollero.

The company introduced AI-powered translation to many countries and rolled out AI-powered analytics for brands last year, among other initiatives to integrate AI technology.

In addition, Reddit has started experimenting with search results pages powered by artificial intelligence. These sites summarise and suggest material from various groups.

Notably, Reddit’s daily active unique user count has increased by 39% year-over-year, reaching 101.7 million.

Huffman dropped hints that the platform would include a Reddit search into the onboarding process in an effort to boost growth, retention, and income.

“I think helping the user be able to search directly on Reddit, refine their queries on Reddit, eventually come directly to Reddit for those types of queries, and even integrating search into something like onboarding over time — I think [these are] really interesting things,” he said. “It’s amazing for us to pick up on that signal … and of course, that signal [has] incredible monetization potential.”