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Not to be dramatic, but if you’re not paying attention to Reddit right now, you’re about to miss the biggest shift in how people actually find answers online in 2026.

Okay, maybe that was a little dramatic, but I am nothing if not true to my Leo Moon.

But the truth is, over the past 18 months Reddit has quietly become the backbone of AI search visibility and not in the “SEO guru says so” sense, but in the “your prospects are literally seeing Reddit content before they click anywhere else” sense.

Here’s why Reddit matters for AI search, how it works, and what you should start doing this week.

Step one: Go buy a shitload of anonymous Reddit accounts with high karma and then — JUST kidding, do not ever f-ing do this.

Okay, let’s go 👇

Nope, like I mentioned last week, Reddit is now a core AI search signal.

Traditional SEO used to be about ranking blog posts, optimizing title tags, and earning backlinks. The importance of traditional search hasn’t disappeared, but a new ecosystem has formed around AI answer engines like ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude, and more.

And guess what’s consistently one of the biggest sources of real-world human content feeding these systems is? Reddit dot com.

AI doesn’t just comb through polished web pages anymore, it’s now trained on real conversations, comparisons, pain points, and first-hand experiences. Reddit’s forums (aka subreddits) are exactly that.

A deep dive into Reddit’s performance in AI search shows:

In a landscape where clarity + authenticity trumps all, Reddit has become a new marketing frontier and it’s still massively underutilized.

💡 Oh wait, btw, I just launched a new offering called Reddit Kickstart Sessions for teams who are interested in Reddit but aren’t quite sure where to start or how to get budget/buy-in from leadership. If this sounds like you, let’s jam!

You’ll leave with a documented Reddit Kickstart Plan to help you feel comfortable and confident as you stand up your next big marketing channel 🙏

There are a few big ecosystem shifts worth understanding:

Large platforms are paying Reddit for access to content to train their models. Why? Because it’s too valuable to ignore. That means Reddit content directly influences the citations and mentions that get pulled into AI answer engines.

Even as Reddit cracks down on unauthorized scraping, the data that does get used via these partnerships continues to shape AI training sets.

Tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity don’t just pull traditional SERP results from Google, they pull answers from other third-party sources that reflect context and helpful information. Reddit’s conversational format scores high on offering context and helpful info.

So if your brand isn’t showing up where conversations happen, you’re essentially invisible where buyers are deciding, not just searching.

Sure, Reddit is great for visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini, etc but there's one major AI search engine people leave off this list: Reddit Answers!

Reddit Answers is Reddit's new(ish) AI search experience that began widely rolling out in early 2025 in a move to capitalize on what we all know about the platform: It's already the destination for people looking for trusted opinions and recommendations.

In 2026, we'll see Reddit continue to invest in the Reddit Answers experience in an effort to:

→ Keep users on-platform longer

→ Become a first-class answer destination just like the bigger players pulling in all their content

→ Provide new ways for businesses to find value on the platform and encourage them to be more intentional with their engagement as they crack down on spammy tactics and shortcuts

We all (mostly) know what influences Google SEO. This is not quite the same. Here’s what matters from a Reddit standpoint:

Threads where users deeply explore a topic (e.g., pricing, use cases, comparisons) get major traction in answer engines.

AI notices how much discussion a thread gets and uses that as a guide for how helpful the content is. More comments, replies to comments, and upvotes = this thread is probably full of pretty valuable information.

AI systems are tuned to look for answers people actually find useful. Reddit’s organic signal on this now typically outweighs traditional, more polished SEO content.

Often, a high-quality comment will be where the real answer lives because it solves the question most directly.

First of all, engaging responsibly is table stakes.

If your goal is “When someone asks an AI X, I want this Reddit thread to show up”, here’s how to be really intentional about it.

Forget keyword lists for a second. AI search runs on natural language prompts, so your first job is to figure out which prompts your ideal customers are using to find products like yours.

Instead of: “best CRM”

Think:

Once you have your list of prompts:

This will tell you: Which subreddits might be worth investing your time and resources.

Now you know where to focus your engagement efforts. Start small by choosing 2-3 subreddits because you’re going for depth and quality of engagement, not trying to cover every single relevant subreddit.

Before you start engaging in these subreddits, study what’s winning:

Then look for format patterns:

This will tell you: Which conversation format and language AI prefers for your specific prompts.

AI search engines value:

This means you want to start small so you can build trust and test what’s actually working before you even think about scaling.

I suggest picking 3 core threads related to your category to start, that way you have plenty of bandwidth to revisit them over time and:

Remember that threads with ongoing discussion send stronger signals than one-and-done replies. Starting small will get you there much faster than a spray-and-pray strategy across dozens of subreddits, even if they’re relevant.

This will tell you: What’s actually working across your chosen subreddits as you stay consistent and earn trust.

Most people try to immediately start creating posts in their chosen subreddits, but AI often pulls answers from comments.

This is great news because commenting is where you should start anyway if you’re new to Reddit. Commenting and participating in existing threads signals to Reddit users and moderators that you are willing to give to the community and you aren’t just there to take.

We call this warming up your account (hey, just like the newsletter name 😎) so Reddit actually trusts you to not be a bot or just an annoying marketer. Ahem, don’t worry, I said ANNOYING marketer. Nobody reading this newsletter would ever be annoying, right?

Choose a credible username and a bio that discloses your brand affiliation without sounding like corporate gibberish (no anonymous accounts!) Link to your expertise in your profile where relevant. I have my LinkedIn profile linked so users can click through and see I’m a normie.

Before you start commenting, go lurk and study the communities where your audience lives. Pay attention to language, norms, and question patterns. Read the subreddit rules. Learn how strict the moderator is about things like content quality and self-promotion.

Yes, months! Commenting thoughtfully on existing discussions is very effective for building trust, getting to know your chosen subreddit communities, and sending the right signals to AI engines.

I read somewhere recently that comments earn trust, while posts spend that trust. You want to make sure you have enough trust and goodwill banked from providing value before you start trying to extract value.

Which leads me to…

No self-promo during these first few months. No jumping in with links. Just help, insight, context, explanation. Like we just talked about, you’re building a portfolio of helpful, impactful comments.

When you find a relevant thread, add a substantive comment that:

After a solid 3 months of building up your trust and authority, then offer up brand mentions only when they are genuinely relevant and helpful in the context of the post.

This will tell you: Whether or not you’re being an annoying marketer. You might get a few salty replies, hell, you may even get banned from a subreddit. If that happens, it’s not ideal, but it is a learning you can use to adjust your engagement style so you’re seen as a helpful community member and not just “that annoying marketer”.

This is the feedback loop that will help you learn what’s working and decide when to scale.

Every 2–4 weeks:

If they’re not showing up:

This will tell you: If your efforts are working! Again, if you aren’t seeing results after your first few months, don’t take that as defeat. The first few months are the testing phase. So test, learn, adjust.

Whew, I am out of breath. I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface even after nearly 2,000 words, but I guess there’s a reason people build entire strategies around this topic 😅

Hopefully you found this to be a helpful explainer. Let me know which parts you’d like to go deeper on, as I suspect I’ll do a Part 2 at some point.

Next week, we’ll do a deep dive on how to use Reddit responsibly for actually finding new customers on the platform via organic engagement. Hope to see you there 🫶

Talk soon,

KD