RSS 68: Reddit, ChatGPT, and the Truth About AI Citations: Why Smart Marketers Shouldn’t Panic

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0:34The last few weeks have been busy. So much change, so much shift, lots going on. But one of the things that has really caught the attention of a lot of people from all over the internet, all over the world, was the announcement that Reddit is not showing up in ChatGPT as much as it once did. When this study broke, there was a lot of chaos. A lot of people sent me tweets, emails, messages asking, Ross, what does this mean? Does this mean we should no longer use Reddit? Does this mean that Reddit is no longer a valuable and relevant brand and resource and media site that we should be investing in?

1:12This was a question that so many people asked. In this episode, my goal is simple, to give you an answer, the unfiltered truth, the unbiased truth, and a reality check around what this means. If you're playing the long game, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Ross Simmons Show.

1:44When it was announced that Reddit had seen a significant decline in its number of citations in ChatGPT, the world responded. Tweets were flying, LinkedIn posts were soaring, gurus were clapping, and so many people had so many opinions. But when this happened, I quickly didn't go down a path of dismay. I didn't go down a path of, oh my goodness, this is going to be absolutely brutal. Nobody is going to find the clients that we work with on Reddit and Reddit is no longer going to be relevant. No, I didn't go down that path at all. And sure, maybe it's because I'm an optimist at front, But the reality is there's something else to it.

2:24And that is that the data that guides and provides that insight that says Reddit is no longer showing brands as much as it used to directly from ChatGPT isn't the exact same data that is relevant to every single situation. Let me say that again. So it's very clear what I mean here. Every day, millions of people are using LLMs to ask questions. Over the last few months, Claude has been very unlikely to ever cite Reddit to give you that information, to give you that answer. And while I don't know for certain if it's connected to the Anthropic versus Reddit lawsuit that happened a few months back, I do believe that it might have something to do with it.

3:13So when I see the news that ChatGPT is no longer citing Reddit as much as it once did, I ask myself, is this an end of Reddit as a channel type of situation? Absolutely not. Millions of people use Reddit every day. So it's not ideal for brands and businesses to be focusing on Reddit exclusively with the intention of just influencing ChatGPT. it's about showing up on Reddit to influence those who use it, but also benefiting from the fact that other sites use it to train their LLMs. But Ross, if ChatGPT is no longer using Reddit as much as it used to, is that a signal that Reddit is no longer valid for our ChatGPT strategy?

4:02Absolutely not. Let me explain why. You see, the way in which somebody uses an LLM is going to be very personalized. The way I use it versus you versus your parents, my parents, our friends, our cousins, our aunts, our peers, our colleagues, our competitors is all going to be very different. And with those differences comes the way in which we use these channels. So as a marketer, when I'm thinking about how I use Reddit, when I'm thinking about whether or not the questions that I ask are going to drive results for me, sometimes I want the question to check Reddit, but sometimes I don't. For example, if I'm sick, if I've became ill, I probably don't want an LLM that is going to use Reddit to help diagnose the problem that I'm trying to overcome.

4:57However, if I have a problem with my computer, if I have a problem with my microphone, if I have a problem with a software and the LLM uses Reddit, that's probably an okay use case. It's a use case I could get behind. So when I see that ChatGPT has declined and reduced the amount of citations happening on Reddit, in my mind, I encourage people to remember one simple thing. And that is, you have to recognize that not all prompts are created equal. Not all prompts are going to benefit from a Reddit citation. Some content will deeply benefit from going to Reddit and pulling answers and using that to give it guidance around where it goes from there.

5:39But some questions, you don't want Reddit to be cited anyway. And the fact that Reddit was showing up wasn't exactly a good thing. So when you recognize this and you recognize that you should be taking the leadership role and lead role in your organization of tracking citations yourself, you might be able to then do a benchmark to see how does this impact you. Over the last few months, we've been using Aerobs to really study and analyze the citation behavior associated with concepts in enterprise B2B. We're going to be publishing a study on that, and I'll have an entire episode on that shortly.

6:17But one of the insights that we've gathered here is that while, yes, the citations have declined, It is important to note that the websites no longer, and while yes, we have recognized that the citation rate of Reddit has declined, it is still very much relevant to bottom of funnel and transactional related queries when people are asking questions about enterprise software. So if you are in the enterprise software game, then no. That headline, that study that shows that Reddit citations have declined isn't exactly one that you should run away from. It's something that you should be aware of, but also should be a signal that if you're not already tracking relevant prompts from your customers, you might be missing out on data like this every single week.

7:05Because this isn't the first time that an algorithm change has influenced buyers. We've all become familiar with this in the world of search when it comes to Google. But in the rise of AI SEO, there's a lot of marketers who are panicking every time change happens. Here's the reality. Change is going to continue to occur. Some days LinkedIn is going to show up in your citations. Some days YouTube is going to show up in your citations. Some days, a certain review site, community site, or a random competitor who spun up a whole bunch of content and built a whole bunch of backlinks is going to show up in your citation's top competitive sites.

7:49The only way to know whether or not this is true or relevant to you is to actually do the tracking yourself. So I encourage you to sign up for an LLM tracking tool and to monitor on a regular basis whether or not you are seeing algorithmic changes in the sites that are being identified and cited for your brand. Now, let's go back to Reddit for a second. Reddit is not just a place for you to influence buyers through ChatGPT. There are two key things that I want every marketer to recognize. One, that Reddit and Google, for the time being, at the moment of this recording, are still in cahoots. What do I mean by that?

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9:41Google still sends a ridiculous amount of organic traffic directly to Reddit threads, and Google still leverages Reddit significantly for citations in AI overviews in AI mode that is uncomparable in terms of the total volume of traction that it has versus ChatGPT. So while everyone is screaming at the top of their lungs that search is dead, the smartest marketers are recognizing the nuance that the vast majority of search experiences still happen directly on Google, and that people are going to continue to use Google because they happen to use Chrome, they happen to have Android devices, and Chrome is a default browser that many use.

10:24As such, lots of queries, lots of prompts are being run on Google properties, and Google's properties are still today not only the most popular, but they are also the ones that are citing Reddit the most. So while everyone says cancel our Reddit efforts, we no longer need Reddit, the truth is, in a world in which Google still dominates the internet, Google still adores and uses Reddit. And thus, Reddit is still relevant for that opportunity. But it's not the only way. One other thing that is very important for marketers of all shapes and sizes to recognize is that Reddit has millions of daily active users.

11:07People trying to figure out how to start their HVAC company. People trying to figure out what insurance they should use. People trying to figure out what waste management software they should actually buy. And people trying to figure wrote what software they should use when they get back to school and they have to manage their classrooms. Folks, it is a mistake to think that people don't actually go into Reddit and ask questions. Reddit is still the front page of the internet. It breaks down news. It breaks breaking news faster than almost any other site. It is consistently a channel in which people are having in-depth dialogues about niche topics that are relevant to them, and very likely, people on a local level talking about your business or on a macro level talking about your category.

11:57When it comes down to it, every week, there are threads that are being created by real people asking questions like, what are the best CRMs? What are the best email management tools? What's the best email marketing tool? These questions are asked every single day. Yes, I will admit that over the last few months, there has been an increase in the amount of spam, the amount of robots, and the amount of people who are trying to abuse Reddit. But one of the things that I love about this site is that Reddit has some of the strongest filters in the world to try to reduce AI abuse. The mods on Reddit, as well as the team behind the scenes at Reddit, intentionally care that it's people working with people, people talking to people, and thus they have intentionally removed thousands of accounts that have tried to play the game of spamming and astroturfing.

12:57Reddit recognizes that the best brands are those who show up on Reddit with one pure intention, to add as much value as possible. And to me, this is where your opportunity lies. We've been helping clients at Foundation go into Reddit and execute two ways. We have a done-for-you model and a done-with-you model, where we work with these clients to help them set up their subreddits, set up their user accounts, to go out and actually engage in dialogues within their category and their product niche where they add value. For example, let's pretend that I was running a company in marketing. I actually do.

13:38and we needed to create a user account to represent our brand. That user account, Ross from Acme, would go into various subreddits about email, SEO, digital marketing, GEO, AEO, etc., and add value, answering questions that people have around the best software that they've used for agentic search, the best software that they've used around agentic social media, aka distribution.ai. All of these things would be questions that I would be able to influence and answer. I wouldn't go in with the intention of just selling. I would go in with the intention of helping. And when you create your Reddit strategy, that should be at the forefront.

14:22Yes, we should be doing keyword research to understand what queries and threads are more likely to rank in Google. Yes, we should be running ads on Reddit that target key subreddits where we know our buyers are spending time. For example, if I am selling to IT professionals, self-employed, maybe I'm going to run Reddit ads directly in our MSP. But I'm not just going to run ads in this community and hope that they click and buy. I'm going to sort the content in that subreddit by top posts so I get an insight into the best content that that community cares about. and then I'm going to run ads promoting this thing that I've created based off of the insights of what the community wants.

15:03For example, if I see that in the MSP community, the most talked about, most highly engaged content of all time is a resource to getting started as an MSP. The first 30, 60, 90 days of your MSP career, what should you do? Then maybe I'm going to look at the date and see that that was published in 2014. And today in 2026, 2027, 2028, a lot of change has happened. I'm going to produce a new piece that is relevant today with relevant insights around today's situation and press publish on that within the RMSP subreddit with an ad promoting this guide and resource that is fully branded for me. By doing so, the community doesn't yell and say, get out of here, you marketers.

15:51It says, thank you. Thank you for helping us. Thank you for providing value. And as long as you do that, your ads on Reddit will work really, really well. Folks, I want to wrap this in a simple bow. Over the next few weeks, you're probably going to see more news, more articles, and more studies that are going to probably lead your CFO, CMO, and your head of marketing in a little bit of a spiral. It's going to happen. This is the way that our marketing world works. This is digital marketing. Billboards don't change. Radio streams don't change. But the world of technology, AI, search, discovery, and algorithms, this stuff changes all the time.

16:34Some of you might be new here. You might be just getting started in your career. And maybe some of you have never had the change that is happening so quickly all the time and it's stressing you out. I have a simple piece of advice. In this industry, change is going to happen whether you like it or not. This is the one industry that is always changing. And that's why I love it. Because it requires marketers to stay on top of their craft. It requires marketers to stay on top of the technology. And the best marketers recognize that that is key to your longevity and your success of your career. Folks, more change is going to come.

17:13In the short term, just because Reddit is no longer being cited in ChatGPT as much as it used to be, but it's still being cited, doesn't mean you throw your Reddit strategy out the window. It means that you continue to monitor. Sure, if ChatGPT, Google, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, and all of the other sites on the internet somehow got to a point where Reddit was cited down to zero, maybe the search-oriented references and content and storytelling might need to be scaled back a bit, but you lean heavier into ads and community, organic side, because there's still a ton of people relying on Reddit.

17:57Folks, I hope you found this episode useful. Share it with a friend, share it with a peer, and I'll see you on the internet.

18:10Gotta hustle with the business