Reddit Domain Analysis – Valuation, Competitors, and Stability

From:

Steve Paine

Published: 16.10.2024

Modified: 27.11.2024

The domain reddit.com is the 3rd most visible domain in Google Search, US (SISTRIX VI, 16th October 2024). The US Visibility Index for Reddit represents a click-potential of over 573 million clicks per month from organic positions in search.

The image below shows the global traffic values for the domain and how much that traffic would cost based on Google Ads prices.

At the very least, presence in search results is good brand marketing for Reddit. Ultimately though, this search presence should bring new users to the platform where they will see ads, can be converted to subscribers, app users or paying subscribers. 

The question is, will it continue to be as visibile, could it grow, or will it lose visibiliy?

Wikipedia, a well-organised user-generated content site, is the benchmark here. As the most visible website on the internet it is over seven times more visible in search than reddit.com. Google may have a special place for this independent information source and Reddit might be more commercially positioned, but, theoretically, there’s more space for Reddit in organic search.

By the measure of ranking distribution in the USA, a good measure of content performance, we can see that 12.5M of 20.54M (60.8%) rankings seen by SISTRIX appear in the Top 10 of search results. It’s a very high-performance figure, but it also means that over nearly 40% of rankings have potential for improvement.

Within page 1 of the search results the latest SISTRIX data shows that 5139271 of 344875954 keyword rankings are in positions 1 to 3. That’s a huge 15% but it leaves 85% in lower positions.

9.46M Reddit URLs have been seen across these rankings.

What is Reddit delivering in search?

Of the 34.5M keywords ranking in the SISTRIX US data, 4.3M (12.5%) have an AI Overview box in the SERP. This number is rising. In October 2024 the ratio was 10.4%.

Conversely, 49.4% of search results with an AI Overview contain an organic result from Reddit, while Reddit is only cited as a source in the AI ​​Overview in 0.056% of cases. [Source: Google’s Unusual, Special Relationship with Reddit]

The top 100 subreddits in search

Thanks to well-organised information directories on the website under the /r subreddit directory we can find the most successful topics on Reddit. 

In tabular form, here are the top 100 subreddits – directories that potentially bring the most clicks through Google search. (US data.)

For reference, 99.9% of all domains we have in our database have a Visibility Index of less than 0.1. All of these directories can be considered successful content clusters in their own right.

Who are Reddit’s competitors in search?

There are obvious competitors in Fandom, Quora and YouTube. Amazon and Wikipedia cannot be ignored either but Google, with its feature boxes, shopping boxes and other ads is also a competitor. There are hidden competitors too.

Firstly, across the complete domain, the top 10 competitors, excluding Google itself, look like this:

The top 10 list of competitors for reddit.com isn’t surprising but it’s at the subreddit level where the competitors get interesting. Here are six popular subreddits and the top competitors that aren’t part of the above list.

It’s clear that there are large, commercially-focused domains that compete. Each subreddit has its own competitor landscape.

The most visible URL in r/buyitforlife, for example, is a thread on the “best coffee maker” which gets an estimated 10980 organic clicks per month.

This one thread on one subreddit, on one domain which competes for visibility with nytimes.com, epicurious.com, target.com, cnn.com and bestbuy.com, to name just five on the list of over 1000 domains that are also on the competitor list for the URL. 

Stability

Can we look into a crystal ball and determine the future? No. Nobody knows when or how the next Google algorithm update will affect reddit.com or user-generated content in general. Nobody knows how the development of AI features in the SERP will affect the click rates. Nobody knows how much of the users’ Reddit information is going to reappear as unique answers through large language models in the future. Nobody knows how the competitors’ activity will affect the search results.

At SISTRIX we often look to see how a domain has reacted to Google updates in the past as an indicator of stability and over the last 12 months there hasn’t been a single negative impact from a Google algorithm update.

The 12 month gains, however, are unprecedented and leave a big question mark over the domain’s stability for 2024.

While long-term stability is a good sign, there are examples of domains that turned the corner and dropped off the cliff. Keep tourscanner.com in mind:

If you want a user-generated content example, Craigslist is a good one:

Spam and automated content in Reddit

Finding usable data to measure the level of ‘spam’ content at this level is very difficult. A glance through some of the top search terms revealed nothing obvious although if you looked closely at the “best coffee maker” example above, you might have noticed something a little non-user-generated there.

It would need a more extensive study in order to determine whether the successful URLs contain spam or low-quality automated content, despite the moderation that is supposed to reduce this spam content.

Brand marketing power?

A concern of some people is the strength of Reddit URLs in brand searches. Reddit does indeed appear for many brand searches. This examples shows Reddit ranking at #10 for Bestbuy.

At first glance it’s a good result but unless you’re at position 1 for a brand search there’s only a low  probability of a click.  The following CTR graph relates to brand searches.

After sorting and filtering 21 million ranking keywords for brands, it is difficult to find anything significant in the top three positions for brands. 

Summary

Reddit is a user-generated information ecosystem that has achieved traction in Google Search that in unprecedented.

The major UGC websites such as Wikipedia, Facebook, Fandom and YouTube compete across the board as you would expect but when you drill down into the subreddits, each has its own competitive environment. 

Over 75% of all reddit.com rankings appear in the Top 10 but only 12% in the top three positions. There is potential for growth.

The 20X growth in Visibility Index in the last 12 months puts the domain in uncharted territory in terms of stability. Despite a good 12 month track record, a close working relationship with Google and room for improvement, it wouldn’t be wrong to expect some sort of correction over the next 12 months.

Finally, on the topic of stability and risks, Reddit must remain attractive to users. Myspace is the example to keep in mind:

Further information sources

Draft S1 including prospectus for the IPO

Reddit AI licensing deal.

Google announcement: Reddit partnership.

The data used in this report is from SISTRIX and focused on the US market. You can find out more about the Visibility Index here. All images above have links into the SISTRIX data for those with an account. (Free trial periods are available.)

Updated on 11th November 2025