Reddit On Google & ChatGPT AI Responses Citations & Lack Of Links

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Barry Schwartz / Executive Editor

On the Reddit Q4 2025 Earnings call (see transcript here), Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, was asked about how he feels about how Google and OpenAI link or use citations to link to Reddit's content. Overall, Steve made it sound like the interfaces are adapting quickly and he is hopeful they will drive traffic to the conversation (within Reddit) in the future.

In short, he would like to see Google and OpenAI make better efforts to drive searchers from the AI answers into the community because he said it is "additive" to do so for those search interfaces. He also added that Reddit's "Relationships are healthy" with both Google and OpenAI. He added that he thinks there is a "lot of movement there" and I guess things can still change with the interfaces from Google and OpenAI.

Of course, Reddit wants people to use its own search and AI features - so that makes the relationship interesting as well.

Richard Greenfield with LightShed Partners asked:

And then just to follow-up on the commentary you had around Google and OpenAI in terms of, the renewal or the how you're talking about them in terms of more of a partnership going forward.

The way that these companies sort of cite not just you, but everybody on the Internet is they paraphrase the content, and then they put a little circle with a number, you sort of click to get more information from where the sources are. How do you like, if you could wave a magic wand or on your blackboard, like, what do you want it to look like so that you have a way to drive people more deeply into the Reddit, Inc. conversational content?

Steve Huffman replied:

On Google and OpenAI, how we feel about the citations, look, I think there's a lot of movement there.

You know, if I could wave a magic wand, I think what we really want is to you know, say I go to some other platform I say, what's the best speaker? Reddit, Inc. helps you know, get a few options for what the best speaker is. I'd like to make that user aware, hey. You can go to the R audio file community and talk to other speaker geek. I think that's the sort of thing that really differentiates Reddit, Inc. and would be additive to, you know, that user's experience. But there's so much movement in both of these products.

On the other part of my brain, I just have some empathy for product people who are moving really, really fast. So we're in close connection with them. Relationships are healthy. Obviously, there's a lot of movement there, and I expect there will continue to do continue to be. But, you know, we'll we'll continue, I think, to evolve together through this. Thanks.

This was spotted by Glenn Gabe, who posted about this on X; "Some key quotes from Reddit's Q4 earnings call about Search, AI content, citations in ChatGPT, AIOs, and others, and more."

Here is the other block Glenn quoted:

Some key quotes from Reddit's Q4 earnings call about Search, AI content, citations in ChatGPT, AIOs, and others, and more.

Regarding Reddit Search vs Reddit Answers (its AI Search):
"And then on search, we did bring the search bars together for the most part. So you're on the… pic.twitter.com/ptUTqYePyt

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 8, 2026

Expand it to see more.

To me, it seems Reddit is still very heavily reliant on Google Search, and the big question is, does Reddit have any pull on how Google shapes its AI responses? If so, will that eventually result in more traffic to publishers?

Forum discussion at X.

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