When the digital marketing landscape changes, you have to adapt. We do that for our clients. We stay on top of and ahead of the changes in the industry. This is ongoing work as the industry is always changing. Recently, it came out that Google is the only search engine that shows Reddit posts in their search results. Below are some facts that the experts at our omnichannel digital marketing agency have to put together right now.
This situation is still unfolding. The ultimate fallout won’t be known for some time. As the situation continues to change, we’ll be there to help our clients every step of the way.
What’s Going On
According to an article in PC Gamer, “Google’s Now the Only Search Engine That Will Show Reddit Posts in Search Results and It’s Somewhat AI’s Fault.”
Jacob Fox writes in the article: “… search engines other than Google, such as Bing and DuckDuckGo, aren’t showing any Reddit results from the last week in their search results.”
Mr. Fox goes on to rewrite that “This seems to be because of changes to Reddit’s robots.txt file” and “But, Google’s still managing to display new Reddit results in search results, which means it’s somehow able to access Reddit’s information despite the robots.txt disallow.”
What It Means to You
Essentially, if you’re creating content on Reddit, it’s not going to show up in any search engine other than Google. Sure, Google’s the biggest search engine, but there are still a lot of potential customers/clients on Bing, DuckDuckGo, and the like.
By not allowing this content into the search results, then the odds are all that much better that it’s going to be buried. You can create great content on Reddit, the kind that would absolutely better connect you to potential customers, demonstrate your authority, reach the audience you want, and so forth… yet, folks won’t be able to find it. That’s a problem.
Before you dismiss this with some variation of “Oh, that’s just Reddit,” remember that Reddit is a truly enormous community. Moreover, Reddit, with so many subreddits, is one of the better platforms for targeting an audience.
So, without even knowing what your business is, gentle reader, we feel quite confident that there’s a subreddit of folks who would be interested in your goods and/or services. With this new action, it’s going to be a bit more difficult to get those people to find your content.
Why is Reddit Doing This?
Most believe that this is due to a deal Google and Reddit have made. Google recently signed a deal with Reddit where Google would get to use Reddit’s content for AI training. Google paid $60 million to be able to do this, so it stands to reason that they would want to get their money’s worth.
That said, this didn’t happen in isolation. As you may know, there’s a trend right now of certain website-blocking bots used by AI companies for data scraping. They don’t want to let the AI companies use their content to train their artificial intelligence, or, rather, they don’t want to let the AI companies use their content to train their artificial intelligence without a fee.
With so much user content being generated at all times, day and night for several years, Reddit is a veritable goldmine of content for AI learning. This can help Google’s AI tremendously.
How Website Depot Can Help
For many years now, our full service digital marketing agency helped our customers with Reddit marketing. We understand the power of Reddit and how to harness it. There’s a subreddit, there’s a community on Reddit that’s interested in what you have to offer. We’ve been able to help connect our clients to those Reddit users. Indeed, we have a proven track record.
Now, that experience is more important than ever. As Reddit becomes less visible without the help of other search engines, it can be all the more beneficial to work with someone who knows how to use Reddit marketing to your business’s advantage.
Reddit isn’t like any other social media platform. It’s not Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and the like – Reddit is a world unto its own. If you’re going to use Reddit to market your business (and you probably should), you’re going to want someone who’s been there before. That’s where we come in.
No matter what happens, or how the world of digital marketing changes, we’ve always connected our clients to their customers. We’re going to continue to do that for a long time to come, not just adapting to changes but adapting these changes to the betterment of our client’s bottom lines.
To schedule a free evaluation, message us through our site or call.