Google has announced that it’s reformatting some of its AI Overview results to accentuate experts and the wisdom of the crowds. This notably puts Reddit front and center in terms of an authoritative source of knowledge for natural language queries, which are the active ingredient in AI search.
Specifically, Google has begun to provide structured answers that, when relevant and available, are appended by a small “expert advice” section. This takes shape in panels that include a few quoted citations from trade press, review sites, and message boards like Reddit (see screenshot below).
One way to look at this is that Google AI Overviews – along with ChatGPT answers and most LLMs – synthesize answers from several sources and serve them to you in their own words. AI Overviews will still do that, but this addition of quoted passages seems to be a play at boosting its trust and credibility.
That all makes sense except for the Reddit part, given its questionable authority. Other expert sources, such as trade press, have more formal editorial standards. So it seems fair to question why Google is lumping in opinionated and unverified message-board fodder like Reddit under the same umbrella.
But the validity of the source may explain the format. In other words, quoting these sources washes Google’s hands clean of misinformation. If it’s not synthesizing the answer but rather reporting what someone else said (which is what Google has always sort of done), it can’t be blamed for hallucinating.
Golden Goose
Stepping back, this move follows a trend in the AI search world to favor long-tail content like Reddit. Because natural language queries – a hallmark of AI search – are so granular, AI engines have to dig deeper to find answers. And they can often find that level of granularity deep in various sub-Reddits.
This was reiterated at Localogy’s L26 show last month when Sterling Sky’s Elizabeth Rule called Reddit the new golden goose of the AI search era. Because Google, ChatGPT, and others are looking to Reddit for answers to nuanced queries, the art of AIO tells us that businesses should be present there.
All of this applies to local search. It’s seeing the same natural-language queries that are more granular and nuanced. SOCi recently quantified this in its Local Visibility Index, which reported that AI-engine queries are almost 6x in length (23 words on average) than traditional search queries (4 words).
But instead of Reddit, those longer and more nuanced queries can often be answered from the reams of local-business chatter that occurs on Yelp. This puts a new spin on an already-important area in traditional SEO: review management. The the stakes are now higher to be on top of your reviews.
So in some ways, Reddit is sort of the Yelp of the broader non-local knowledge graph, and it’s getting more play than ever with the rising tide of AI search. It still has credibility issues, so Google and others will continue to look for ways to surface answers, while maintaining that thing we like to call accuracy.
