A new report from Reddit, in collaboration with GWI and AmbassCo, sheds light on the evolving search behaviors of Generation Z consumers.
The study surveyed over 3,000 internet users across the UK, US, and Germany, highlighting significant changes in how young people discover and research products online.
Here’s an overview of key findings and the implications for marketers.
Decline In Traditional Search
The study found that Gen Z uses search engines to find new brands and products less often.
That’s because they shop online differently. They’re less interested in looking for expert reviews or spending much time searching for products.
There are also frustrations with mobile-friendliness and complex interfaces on traditional search platforms.
Because of this, traditional SEO strategies might not work well for reaching younger customers.
Takeaway
Companies trying to reach Gen Z might need to try new methods instead of just focusing on being visible on Google and other search engines.
Rise Of Social Media Discovery
Screenshot from Reddit study titled: “From search to research: How search marketers can keep up with Gen Z.”, June 2024.
The study shows that Gen Z has used social media for product discovery 36% more frequently since 2018.
This change is affecting how young people shop online. Instead of searching for products, they expect brands to appear in their social media feeds.
Screenshot from Reddit study titled: “From search to research: How search marketers can keep up with Gen Z.”, June 2024.
Because of this, companies trying to reach young customers need to pay more attention to how they present themselves on social media.
Takeaway
To succeed at marketing to Gen Z, businesses will likely need to focus on two main things:
Ensure that your content appears more often in social media feeds.
Create posts people want to share and interact with.
Trust Issues With Influencer Marketing
Even though more people are finding products through social media, the report shows that Gen Z is less likely to trust what social media influencers recommend.
These young shoppers often don’t believe in posts that influencers are paid to make or products they promote.
Instead, they prefer to get information from sources that feel more real and are driven by regular people in online communities.
Takeaway
Because of this lack of trust, companies must focus on being genuine and building trust when they try to get their websites to appear in search results or create ads.
Some good ways to connect with these young consumers might be to use content created by regular users, encourage honest product reviews, and create authentic conversations within online communities.
Challenges With Current Search Experiences
The research shows that many people are unhappy with how search engines work right now.
More than 60% of those surveyed want search results to be more trustworthy. Almost half of users don’t like looking through many search result pages.
Gen Z is particularly bothered by inaccurate information and unreliable reviews.
Screenshot from Reddit study titled: “From search to research: How search marketers can keep up with Gen Z.”, June 2024.
Takeaway
Given the frustration with search quality, marketers should prioritize creating accurate, trustworthy content.
This can help build brand credibility, leading to more direct visits.
Reddit: A Trusted Alternative
The report suggests that Gen Z trusts Reddit when looking up products—it’s their third most trusted source, after friends and family and review websites.
Screenshot from Reddit study titled: “From search to research: How search marketers can keep up with Gen Z.”, June 2024.
Young users like Reddit because it’s community-based and provides specific answers to users’ questions, making it feel more real.
It’s worth noting that this report comes from Reddit itself, which probably influenced why it’s suggesting its own platform.
Takeaway
Companies should focus more on being part of smaller, specific online groups frequented by Gen Z.
That could include Reddit or any other forum.
Why SEJ Cares
As young people change how they look for information online, this study gives businesses important clues about connecting with future customers.
Here’s what to remember:
Traditional search engine use is declining among Gen Z.
Social media is increasingly vital for product discovery.
There’s growing skepticism towards influencer marketing.
Current search experiences often fail to meet user expectations.
Community-based platforms like Reddit are gaining trust.
In its nearly 20 years of existence, Reddit has built a robust, dynamic, and highly engaged community.
It has cemented itself as not only one of the key influencers for the internet culture we have come to know today, but also as one of the top 10 social media sites in the world, with more than 500,000 monthly visitors across more than 100,000 active communities.
Despite its size and influence, marketers have long avoided, overlooked, and failed to establish a presence on what is arguably one of the most influential social media sites today.
To be fair, Reddit has always been known as one of the hardest communities to have marketing success with, requiring months (if not years) of dedicated commitment to actually being a part of the community and engaging with your audience through meaningful, genuine, and honest interactions.
To many, that is just too much risk and too much work, but let’s be honest – most amazing things take risk and hard work. And for all of you who put in that work to be successful on Reddit, you already see the payoff it brings.
Regardless of the reasons, marketers who continue to overlook Reddit’s potential are missing out on an extremely influential community with ideal targeted demographics, where authenticity and genuine connections lead to valuable information, positive branding, and marketing success.
Not convinced? Let’s take a closer look at Reddit!
Reddit Stats You Cannot Ignore
Reddit users are dedicated to their use of the platform, with a reported 73.1 million (14.6%) of its 500 million users visiting the site daily, sharing over 1 billion posts, with over 16 billion comments across 100,000+ active communities, making it easily one of the top visited and most active sites in the United States today.
The user base is so loyal that they spend, on average, 20 minutes on the platform each day (and over 45 minutes a day for long-time users of more than 7 years) and, in many cases, are inactive on other social platforms.
This makes Reddit one of the only places to actually get in front of this massive audience, with 32% being inactive on Facebook, 37% on Instagram, 41% on TikTok, and 53% on X.
When it comes to demographics, a 2019 survey concluded that the overall Reddit audience was majority male (59%), ranged in age (36% aged 18-29; 25% aged 30-49), and well educated (42% college degree; 31% some college) making them an ideal audience many businesses looking for success.
They also helped Reddit improve revenues by 21% to $804 million in 2023, with a global addressable market for advertising estimated at $1.4 trillion by 2027.
Thought by many to be mostly a North American audience, Reddit claims more than 50% of its traffic comes from international users, a rather impressive climb from its earlier years.
It is important to remember, though, that Reddit is a platform that allows communities to grow and thrive, so those demographics change from subreddit to subreddit.
If that isn’t enough to grab your attention, surveys have found that 75% of users find Reddit a trustworthy source for making purchasing decisions.
For years now, it has been included heavily and prominently in Google search results, which have become even more visible due to reports following their inclusion in SGE results and with Google’s recent $60 million a year deal with Reddit to have real-time access to Reddit content and to use its content to train Google’s future AI models.
Speaking of Reddit’s visibility in Google’s search results, let’s take a closer look at why that deal is so important, especially to search marketers.
Reddit In Google Search, SGE, And Google’s Reddit Deal
For years, Reddit results have been prominently displayed in Google’s search results – so much so that users have even started adding the term “reddit” to the end of their search queries.
So often, you will see Google suggest search lines with the term “reddit” prefilled at the end.
Screenshot by author from search for [are purple mattresses good], Google, May 2024
Even without selecting the query that includes “reddit,” you will notice Reddit’s prominent placement in two places: discussions and forums, and Reddit sitelinks, which are both just below the ads and the first organic result.
Screenshot by author from search for [are purple mattresses good], Google, May 2024
This was amplified by Google’s recent Helpful Content Update (HCU), which allowed platforms like Reddit and other forums to show up more frequently in search results,
Reddit’s ability to be helpful in satisfying a user’s search for information is so successful – in combination with reported shortages in new content for AI models from all major platforms – it is not surprising Google struck a deal with Reddit to show its content faster in search results and to use the content in training future AI models.
Since news of the deal between Reddit and Google was reported, there has been a lot of additional focus on Reddit’s visibility in Google’s search results.
Experts throughout the search industry report an increase in not only the total visibility of Reddit going up within search but also the speed at which a Reddit post is indexed and shown to users.
Google responded to concerns about Reddit showing up more in search results, saying that “some of the SEO folks who tend to be vocal on this platform (X) really dislike seeing more forum content in our search results. But actual searchers seem to like it. They proactively seek it out. It makes sense for us to be showing it to keep the search results relevant and satisfying for everyone.”
Adding to the deal Reddit made with Google, it was recently reported that OpenAI has partnered with Reddit to surface their content in ChatGPT, adding to the clear value that both OpenAI and Google see in Reddit’s content today and in the future.
Of course, this has sparked a lot of interest in companies of all sizes. They want to figure out how their brands can participate and succeed on Reddit in hopes of increasing their visibility in Google’s search results, SGE, and ChatGPT and building their brand’s visibility amongst one of the most influential audiences on the internet today.
**Quick warning: Reddit requires genuine, long-term engagement and a strategy for success. So, I would definitely advise individuals and businesses to avoid trying to game, spam, or blindly jump into marketing on Reddit and take the time to really understand the platform, its audience, and your place of value within its communities.
Let’s look at how some major brands have been successful on Reddit in the past.
noosa Yoghurt
Noosa Yoghurt’s 2021 back-to-school campaign on Reddit was a great example of tapping into niche audiences to create engaging, user-driven content.
To capitalize on Reddit’s community of vocal yogurt enthusiasts, noosa launched a Flavor Poll that invited Redditors to upvote their favorite noosa flavors in the comments. This created a sense of community and interactivity around what could have been a standard poll.
Screenshot by author from Reddit, May 2024
After tallying the upvotes, noosa published a Promoted Post that showcased the results using a sleek custom infographic, highlighting the community’s favorites while also giving the brand important insight into consumer preferences.
Screenshot by author from Reddit, May 2024
The results:
49% increase in brand recall among Reddit users who were exposed to the campaign.
30% increase in brand favorability.
39% increase in purchase intent (15X the typical lift observed in the food vertical).
50+ billion monthly views.
Sony Pictures Germany
To drum up excitement around the release of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” in Germany, Sony Pictures Germany crafted a Reddit campaign that combined organic and promoted content to engage the platform’s robust fan communities.
The brand created a Reddit account under the protagonist’s name, u/MilesMorales, and used it to share exclusive content directly within Spiderman-related subreddits.
It also organized an AMA with the German voice actor Miles Morales to create a more personal connection with fans and promoted video posts featuring the movie trailer to amplify the excitement.
Screenshot by author from Reddit, May 2024
The results:
Sony Pictures Germany achieved a click-through rate (CTR) that was 344% higher than that of its standard paid media.
831 upvotes.
618,000 impressions.
The film remained No. 1 on the German movie charts for three consecutive weeks.
It is important to note that promoting your content and your brand on Reddit is definitely not the only value Reddit can bring you and your business.
Reddit is an amazing place to get honest feedback.
Whether you are trying to figure out what your target audience wants from your brand, test out a new feature or concept before investing and launching it openly, or even just to have continued open communication with your customers to support them and keep them connected to your brand, Reddit can help you succeed in an amazing way.
Transamerica Helping Reddit Make Dollars Make Sense
Transamerica’s campaign on Reddit is a great example of a company identifying an opportunity to connect with its target audience on the subreddit /r/finance.
This allows the company to better understand its customers’ needs and focus on content creation and future marketing plans.
Screenshot by author from Reddit, May 2024
Aligning itself with its audience by demonstrating awareness of the topics around personal finance happening in the subreddit, as well as acknowledging the Redditors working at the company, it asked what topics it could create “specifically for the reddit community” around the topic of finance.
It stayed involved and engaged throughout the campaign, responding to threads and maintaining a lighthearted and sometimes humorous tone.
Screenshot by author from Reddit, May 2024
After getting all the feedback it needed, it created content around the more popular requests, going as far as branding and designing them similar to Reddit.
Screenshot by author from Reddit, May 2024
It even took the time to individually comment a link to the published content on its site, bringing attention back to the overall campaign and the content it created.
This campaign was 10 years ago, and it is still referenced as a core example of engaging on Reddit as a brand in a respectful, thoughtful, and meaningful way.
Why You Should Be On Reddit Wrapup
TL;DR: If your brand has something meaningful to say and is interested in truly connecting with your audience, then yes, you should be on Reddit.
These successful brand campaign examples showcase Reddit’s power when used correctly. With research to understand the specific communities you want to reach, Reddit can have exceptional performance compared to other channels.
The stakes are high to get it right because Reddit communities can be highly negative toward self-serving promotion. But if you put in the effort and solve people’s needs and problems, Reddit has the potential to be a high-performance channel.
Google’s Danny Sullivan disputed the assertions made in a Reddit discussion that Google is showing a preference for Reddit in the search results. But a Redditor’s example proves that it’s possible for a Reddit post to rank in the top ten of the search results within minutes and to actually improve rankings to position #2 a week later.
Discussion About Google Showing Preference To Reddit
A Redditor (gronetwork) complained that Google is sending so many visitors to Reddit that the server is struggling with the load and shared an example that proved that it can only take minutes for a Reddit post to rank in the top ten.
That post was part of a 79 post Reddit thread where many in the r/SEO subreddit were complaining about Google allegedly giving too much preference to Reddit over legit sites.
“…The website is already cracking (server down, double posts, comments not showing) because there are too many visitors.
…It only takes few minutes (you can test it) for a post on Reddit to appear in the top ten results of Google with keywords related to the post’s title… (while I have to wait months for an article on my site to be referenced). Do the math, the whole world is going to spam here. The loop is completed.”
Reddit Post Ranked Within Minutes
Another Redditor asked if they had tested if it takes “a few minutes” to rank in the top ten and gronetwork answered that they had tested it with a post titled, Google SGE Review.
gronetwork posted:
“Yes, I have created for example a post named “Google SGE Review” previously. After less than 5 minutes it was ranked 8th for Google SGE Review (no quotes). Just after Washingtonpost.com, 6 authoritative SEO websites and Google.com’s overview page for SGE (Search Generative Experience). It is ranked third for SGE Review.”
It’s true, not only does that specific post (Google SGE Review) rank in the top 10, the post started out in position 8 and it actually improved ranking, currently listed beneath the number one result for the search query “SGE Review”.
Screenshot Of Reddit Post That Ranked Within Minutes
Anecdotes Versus Anecdotes
Okay, the above is just one anecdote. But it’s a heck of an anecdote because it proves that it’s possible for a Reddit post to rank within minutes and get stuck in the top of the search results over other possibly more authoritative websites.
hankschrader79 shared that Reddit posts outrank Toyota Tacoma forums for a phrase related to mods for that truck.
Google’s Danny Sullivan responded to that post and the entire discussion to dispute that Reddit is not always prioritized over other forums.
“Reddit is not always prioritized over other forums. [super vhs to mac adapter] I did this week, it goes Apple Support Community, MacRumors Forum and further down, there’s Reddit. I also did [kumo cloud not working setup 5ghz] recently (it’s a nightmare) and it was the Netgear community, the SmartThings Community, GreenBuildingAdvisor before Reddit. Related to that was [disable 5g airport] which has Apple Support Community above Reddit. [how to open an 8 track tape] — really, it was the YouTube videos that helped me most, but it’s the Tapeheads community that comes before Reddit.
In your example for [toyota tacoma], I don’t even get Reddit in the top results. I get Toyota, Car & Driver, Wikipedia, Toyota again, three YouTube videos from different creators (not Toyota), Edmunds, a Top Stories unit. No Reddit, which doesn’t really support the notion of always wanting to drive traffic just to Reddit.
If I guess at the more specific query you might have done, maybe [overland mods for toyota tacoma], I get a YouTube video first, then Reddit, then Tacoma World at third — not near the bottom. So yes, Reddit is higher for that query — but it’s not first. It’s also not always first. And sometimes, it’s not even showing at all.”
hankschrader79 conceded that they were generalizing when they wrote that Google always prioritized Reddit. But they also insisted that that didn’t diminish what they said is a fact that Google’s “prioritization” forum content has benefitted Reddit more than actual forums.
Why Is The Reddit Post Ranked So High?
It’s possible that Google “tested” that Reddit post in position 8 within minutes and that user interaction signals indicated to Google’s algorithms that users prefer to see that Reddit post. If that’s the case then it’s not a matter of Google showing preference to Reddit post but rather it’s users that are showing the preference and the algorithm is responding to those preferences.
Nevertheless, an argument can be made that user preferences for Reddit can be a manifestation of Familiarity Bias. Familiarity Bias is when people show a preference for things that are familiar to them. If a person is familiar with a brand because of all the advertising they were exposed to then they may show a bias for the brand products over unfamiliar brands.
Users who are familiar with Reddit may choose Reddit because they don’t know the other sites in the search results or because they have a bias that Google ranks spammy and optimized websites and feel safer reading Reddit.
Google may be picking up on those user interaction signals that indicate a preference and satisfaction with the Reddit results but those results may simply be biases and not an indication that Reddit is trustworthy and authoritative.
Is Reddit Benefiting From A Self-Reinforcing Feedback Loop?
It may very well be that Google’s decision to prioritize user generated content may have started a self-reinforcing pattern that draws users in to Reddit through the search results and because the answers seem plausible those users start to prefer Reddit results. When they’re exposed to more Reddit posts their familiarity bias kicks in and they start to show a preference for Reddit. So what could be happening is that the users and Google’s algorithm are creating a self-reinforcing feedback loop.
Is it possible that Google’s decision to show more user generated content has kicked off a cycle where more users are exposed to Reddit which then feeds back into Google’s algorithm which in turn increases Reddit visibility, regardless of lack of expertise and authoritativeness?
Google announced a deal with Reddit to gain access to real-time access to all of its content so that Google can show even more Reddit content than it already does and to gain access to all of its content for training models.
The agreement between Google and Reddit is explicit that this will result in increased visibility for Reddit discussions in various Google products, which may include various search surfaces across a range of topics and contexts.
Google’s access to a wider range of Reddit content in a structured format will the ability of language models to understand human conversations and writing styles. AI is increasingly used in search so this could in turn affect how content is understood and ranked in Google search.
Reddit gains access to Google’s Vertex AI platform to improve search and create other “capabilities” with it. The deal is reported to be worth $60 million dollars per year for Reddit.
Reddit, Google Search And AI
Reddit has become a popular destination for people to have discussions on virtually any topic, making it a such a popular destination for people seeking information that searchers append the word “Reddit” to searches to surface content directly from Reddit and avoid Google’s search results altogether.
Conversations on Reddit are also useful for training large language models because of the diversity of content topics, as a deep source of conversational data written in multiple forms of writing.
Structured Reddit Content
Content that is on the web is said to be unstructured data. Machines need to process unstructured data to remove the irrelevant bits like navigation and extract the main content. It also has to make sense of the upvoted and downvoted content.
Structured data however is data that’s already sorted into its component parts so that there is no ambiguity about the data.
Google now has access to all of that data in real-time and in a structured format that will make it easier for Google to make sense of the information and use it more efficiently, with what Google describes as “enhanced signals” that will help Google to display it in more useful ways.
The announcement by both Google and Reddit state that one of Google’s intentions is to show more content from Reddit.
Google explained how they will use the content:
“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. We know people find this information useful, so we’re developing ways to make it even easier to access across Google products. 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.”
Another component of the deal mentioned by both Google and Reddit is that the partnership will help people participate in Reddit conversations.
“Our work with Google will make it easier for people to find, discover, and engage in content and communities on Reddit that are most relevant to them.”
Screenshot from Reddit study titled: “From search to research: How search marketers can keep up with Gen Z.”, June 2024.
Screenshot from Reddit study titled: “From search to research: How search marketers can keep up with Gen Z.”, June 2024.
Screenshot from Reddit study titled: “From search to research: How search marketers can keep up with Gen Z.”, June 2024.
Screenshot from Reddit study titled: “From search to research: How search marketers can keep up with Gen Z.”, June 2024.
