The decision to turn to Reddit is because many people are dissatisfied with Google’s results.
This is partly because the importance of appearing at the top of Google has led companies to game the system, cluttering the results with unhelpful links.
Google is not what it used to be.
Earlier this month, that included me.
Reddit, which went public in March, is a social network with 82.7 million daily active users who gather and often post anonymously in groups called subreddits.
Users can ‘upvote’ or ‘downvote’ what others contribute, bringing to light what are considered the best responses.
The decision to turn to Reddit is because many people are dissatisfied with Google’s results.
This is partly because the importance of appearing at the top of Google has led companies to game the system, cluttering the results with unhelpful links.
There are misleading ads, a barrage of sponsored shopping links and dubious websites claiming to be experts when they are not.
Some people turn to artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT to get answers, but others now add ‘Reddit’ to the end of any Google search string to bring up comments from real people.
Ryan Bender, a publicist working in entertainment and technology in Los Angeles, sees Reddit as a ‘two-way Wikipedia’ service.
‘You can do research and also find a community to further chat about a topic. Reddit isn’t great for information such as `when a baseball game starts,’ but it’s useful when you want to know various points of view,’ he said.
Bender, a 35-year-old father of a 3-year-old boy, recently found an ad on social media for an offer on toddler clothing.
He Googled the company’s name with ‘ad too good to be true.’
The first result was a Reddit thread where several people claimed to have fallen for the scam.
Others pointed out details of the site that could indicate fraud.
‘With Reddit, you’re talking to like-minded people who have nothing to gain other than sharing their opinions,’ Bender commented.
Inspired by Reddit followers, I decided to do a general Google search and a specific Reddit search for each query for a week, and then compare the results.
First, I asked search experts and veteran users for advice.
Trial and error Google dominates the search market: the Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against the company.
Even Google acknowledges that people often turn to Reddit for advice on topics such as product recommendations and travel tips. Reddit signed an agreement in February to use Reddit data to train its artificial intelligence, while Reddit can use Google’s AI models to improve its own search results (Reddit has a similar agreement with OpenAI).
During May, visits to Reddit from desktop and mobile computers increased 39% year-on-year to 2.4 billion, according to Similarweb.
Over the same period, visits to Google declined 2.2% to 86.2 billion, according to the web and application analytics firm.
‘Google search satisfies an incredibly diverse range of information needs,’ a Google representative said.
‘We’re constantly innovating to help people find exactly what they’re looking for,’ she added.
When it comes to recommending products, people often consider Reddit groups and social media influencers to be less biased, whether that’s true or not, said Ross Simmonds, founder of a Halifax, Nova Scotia-based content marketing agency.
‘People trust groups of people more than a single source,’ he added.
‘Reddit’s anonymity means you might not know who someone really is, but it can also make people feel comfortable expressing themselves.
Also important: people on Reddit sometimes joke around.
A famous AI-generated Google recommendation to add glue to pizza is believed to have started as a Reddit comment 11 years ago (Google has declined to confirm this).
Instead, add the word to Google searches, advanced users commented.
Reddit is working to improve its site search, for example, by displaying snippets of what you’re searching for more prominently, said S erkan Piantino, Reddit’s vice president of product, AI/machine learning, search and security.
When her newborn son spent 21 days in the intensive care unit in 2020, Bryanne DeGoede turned to Reddit.
The founder of a public relations firm in Hermosa Beach, California, found that people on Reddit could relate.
‘It opened the door for me and I started to trust,’ recounted DeGoede, now 37.
But after her son suffered several ear infections in 2022 and had to have tubes put in his ears the following year, she found horror stories on Reddit about the procedure.
Her experience was very different.
She now sees Reddit as a kind of ratings app, where people who have bad experiences tend to post more than others.
She is more skeptical and quickly dismisses unfamiliar posts.
ESPAÑOL