Reddit is going logged-in only. Blame Google AI Overviews

Reddit plans to make its service mostly accessible only to logged-in users, pointing to falling search referrals as one reason. CEO Steve Huffman says Google’s AI Overviews are no longer sending meaningful traffic, as search results increasingly answer questions directly and users turn to AI tools instead of visiting websites. The shift reverses Reddit’s sharp growth in Google referrals in 2024, when the company was preparing to go public and had licensed its posts to Google for AI training. Similarweb recorded a 39% rise in Reddit traffic from May 2023 to May 2024, much of it driven by search.

The decline has accelerated: Reddit told shareholders search traffic fell substantially in the third quarter, and referrals dropped by more than one million per week on average in October. If that trend continues, the company estimates it could lose a low-double-digit percentage of its current base of 130 million daily active unique visitors. Reddit remains financially strong, reporting $895 million in revenue, up 53% year over year, and says 80% of its monetization comes from app and logged-in users, whose activity can be targeted more effectively for advertising. The move therefore serves both as a response to weakened search traffic and a business strategy, but it also marks a retreat from the open web that Reddit helped shape.