Reddit's CEO says AI Mode sends no clicks to anyone
The quote from the earnings call is now spreading through SEO circles, and the numbers behind it are ugly.
Reddit's CEO told investors that Google's AI Mode no longer sends traffic to websites, and not just to Reddit. The Kobeissi Letter posted the line from the earnings call, and it has been passed around SEO accounts all week. We covered the stock reaction earlier, but the quote itself is what people are reacting to now.
The words were blunt. According to The Kobeissi Letter, the CEO said AI Mode does not drive traffic, not for Reddit and not for anybody as far as he knows, and that it used to be a traffic driver and now it is not.
The numbers around it
The account @puckrin says Reddit's stock fell 30% in a single day after earnings and is down 44% in two weeks. The Kobeissi Letter says Google's own stock erased 480 billion dollars just 24 hours before that statement, over the same worry that AI is disrupting the traditional search model.
Charles Floate laid out the trade in plain terms. Google paid Reddit 65 million dollars for its data. Reddit used to get 25 billion clicks a year from Google. That data now feeds AI Overviews, and AI Overviews send no clicks back.
Reddit USED to get 25 BILLION clicks a year from Google
Google's side of this is not looking much better. Barry Schwartz reports that Google's @PhilippSchi said ads in AI Mode earn less than traditional search ads. So the format that is eating the clicks is also making Google less money per ad.
What this means for your site
Nobody is claiming Google traffic has gone to zero for small sites. Reddit is a special case, a giant forum that Google leaned on heavily and then licensed for AI answers. But the point stands that clicks from one search box are not a business plan you can count on forever.
So do the boring thing. Pick one source of visits that is not Google and put some effort into it this month, an email list, a referral partner, a local directory your customers actually use. Then open Google Analytics and check what share of your visits already come from somewhere other than search. If that number is tiny, you know where the risk is.
AI mode does not drive traffic. Not for us and not to anybody as far as I know. It used to be a traffic driver. Now it's not.
Be the person who already knew
One email a day. Under three minutes. You will hear about a Google change before it shows up in your traffic.