Google’s AI search is now turning to Reddit for answers

Dubai: For years, internet users looking for real answers developed a workaround for Google Search: add one word at the end of every query — Reddit.

Now, Google is bringing that behaviour directly into AI Search.

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The company is updating AI Overviews and AI Mode to include what it calls “Expert Advice” — first-hand perspectives pulled from Reddit, public forums, blogs and community discussions, alongside traditional web links and publisher content. The move signals a major shift in how Google’s AI search engine decides what counts as useful information online.

In practical terms, users searching for advice — whether on travel, health, photography or technology — may increasingly see AI-generated summaries enriched with quotes, excerpts and discussion highlights from real online communities, rather than relying solely on indexed webpages.

That reflects a broader reality of how search has changed.

For years, Reddit has quietly become one of the internet’s most trusted repositories of lived experience — from troubleshooting gadgets to financial advice to highly specific niche recommendations. TechCrunch recently reported that Reddit’s own search traffic has climbed sharply, underscoring how deeply people rely on community-driven answers in an era increasingly crowded by AI-generated content.

Google’s update is also part of a larger reinvention of Search.

Over the past year, the company has expanded conversational AI Mode, rolled out interactive search tools such as Search Live, and integrated Gemini-powered personalization into search experiences. Instead of returning a page of blue links, Google increasingly wants Search to act more like an answer engine — one that can summarize, explain and now cite human discussion at scale.

But there is another layer to this shift: trust.

AI-generated search results have faced repeated criticism over factual mistakes and “hallucinated” answers. Early AI Overview missteps — including bizarre and inaccurate responses that went viral — forced Google to rethink how its models source and present information. By surfacing first-hand perspectives from forums, Google appears to be anchoring AI answers in more recognisably human voices.

The move could also reshape the web economy.

Publishers have warned that AI summaries reduce clicks to original websites, while academic research suggests AI Overviews can materially cut traffic to source pages. Adding Reddit and forums more prominently into results may further change which voices win visibility — and which lose audience.

Search once ranked webpages.

Now, it is starting to rank conversations.

And in Google’s AI future, the internet’s comment section may matter more than ever.