Google gives, and Google takes away — the real lesson in Reddit’s search slump.

For the last two years, a huge slice of the marketing advice online boiled down to three words: “get on Reddit.” Reddit was everywhere in Google — so brands, agencies, and spammers all piled in. This summer, that bet quietly lost almost half its value.

SEO analyst Edward Sturm recently pointed out that Reddit has gone from ranking for roughly 750 million Google keywords back in February to about 465 million today. That’s a loss of around 285 million rankings — nearly 38% of its search footprint — in a matter of months. For a site that had spent years going nothing but up, that’s a genuine turn.

Reddit didn’t get worse. Google changed its mind.

Here’s the part most of the “Reddit is dying” takes skip. Reddit’s content didn’t suddenly collapse in quality. What changed is how much Google decided to favor it.

Rewind to 2024: Google signed a reported $60-million-a-year deal to license Reddit’s content for AI training, right as Google’s “helpful content” push was busy demoting thin websites and elevating real human discussion. Forums got a massive tailwind. And where visibility is easy, the manipulators follow — Reddit filled up with coordinated, often AI-generated posts engineered purely to rank.

Now Google is walking it back. Respected search analyst Glenn Gabe has documented Reddit sliding in both classic search and AI answers across the recent core and spam updates. The “Reddit is everywhere” era was never a law of nature. It was a setting — and Google just moved the dial.

The platforms Google favors this year are not the platforms it will favor next year.

That’s the whole lesson in one story. If your visibility is rented from whatever Google happens to be boosting this quarter — a platform, a loophole, a trend — you’re one update away from watching it evaporate. It’s the same reason we tell clients not to build their house on whatever’s winning in AI search this month either.

A quick word on that scary number

“285 million keywords” sounds apocalyptic, and plenty of headlines are treating it that way. But keyword count isn’t traffic. What actually matters is which terms moved and where they were ranking — a page slipping from #60 to #75 is not the same as losing the top spot for something people actually search. Reading a shift for what it truly moves, instead of reacting to the headline, is a big part of the job. It’s also why we don’t panic-chase every update — and why we don’t want you to either.

What this means if you run a business in San Antonio

If you’re a plumber, a roofer, a shop, or a service business here in town, the takeaway isn’t “worry about Reddit.” You probably never depended on it. The takeaway is what it proves: the durable stuff is what survives every one of these swings.

Your own website steadily earning authority. A Google Business Profile you actually own and control. Real reviews from real customers. Content that answers the real questions your buyers ask. None of that gets switched off when Google recalibrates a licensing deal or ships a spam update. That foundation is exactly what our SEO and Local SEO work is built to grow — visibility you keep, not visibility you rent.

Our job is to change with it

The reason we publish notes like this every week is simple: the ground moves constantly, and staying current is the work. When Google elevated forums, good SEOs adjusted. Now that it’s pulling back, we adjust again. You shouldn’t have to track core updates, spam updates, and AI-licensing deals to know whether your marketing still stands on solid ground — that’s ours to watch, so your leads keep coming while the rules shift underneath everyone else.

The tools change. The tactics change. Caring enough to keep up doesn’t. That’s marketing made with love.