This Is How You Need to Approach Reddit for AI Search in 2026

How we're optimising for Reddit

Since work has really ramped up on optimising for AI Search, one of the most frequent questions we get asked is how we’re optimising for Reddit, since it’s often one of the highest cited sources.

The Data Reddit as Citations for LLMs

This is a very fair question, since Reddit almost ubiquitously tops the charts as the most cited domain in studies on the topic. Even with a notable drop in citations around September 2025, Reddit remains at the top of the pile.

Source - https://www.semrush.com/blog/most-cited-domains-ai/

Profound Client Reports

We see a similar trend for citations for clients we’re tracking, with Reddit often near the business end of the top cited domains. This does change per topic, however, so it’s definitely worth ensuring we’re looking at at least that level of granularity when it comes to making decisions and actions off the back of it.

Looking at a topic level, it can be easier to scale actual actions off the back of this since the top 5 cited pages account for over 20% of citations in this specific topic.

Why is Reddit So Highly Cited?

The whole purpose of Reddit is to be a source of first-person user-generated content based on individuals’ own experiences and/or expertise. With subreddits dedicated to specific (at times very niche) topics, it’s the perfect source of information for LLMs. Perhaps less directly-manipulated than brand review platforms (depending on how optimistic you are..!), and combined with the official partnership Reddit signed with Google, it’s perhaps no surprise that Reddit has taken an early lead in citations for AI search.

My personal prediction is that over time, Reddit will become less highly cited as AI models learn more and diversify sources (and has already seen a drop). Although, as long as it remains a source of rich (and real) user-generated content, it should always remain valuable for LLMs to cite.

Automating Reddit Responses - The Temptation & Risks

The Temptation

With Reddit being so highly cited, the obvious desire is to ensure that the sentiment being shown across threads is a positive one, to ensure that this then gets reflected in LLMs and AI Search responses about your brand.

The quickest and easiest way to do this is to manufacture the comments and highest-rated comments within these threads - essentially manipulating the sentiment of these threads and comments to ensure a positive response.

The relative ease of this action, coupled with the potential rewards, makes it a tempting action for brands. However, this is an approach we highly recommend avoiding.

What Does This Look Like?

So, what things would be done to manipulate Reddit citations? This falls into a few different actions:

• Seeding positive posts in relevant subreddits

• Seeding positive comments in threads mentioning the brand

• Upvoting positive comments/posts

• Downvoting negative comments/posts

• Creating/buying accounts en masse to facilitate the above

Often referred to as “astro-turfing”, this is often obvious to Reddit users and has been called out in the past, which can lead to serious damage to brand reputation.

The Risks

1. Brand Damage

A reputation takes a lifetime to build and a second to destroy. The same is true with the trust that customers have in your brand. The value Reddit has as a source comes with a general feeling of transparency and legitimacy.

Being caught (or suspected of) trying to manipulate Reddit threads, or automate large-scale Reddit posts to promote your brand, can obliterate brand trust built over decades.

Often, advice is given to infiltrate niche subreddits since these are the most relevant. However, Redditors within these communities are also the most engaged and clued up on maintaining authenticity and honesty. If you are caught manipulating, you will get disowned and criticised by the very people you are trying to get to buy into your brand. Reddit’s anti-marketing radar is VERY strong.

One recent example from a marketing agency using fake Reddit accounts to promote a new game shows how Redditors can pick up on this manipulation, leading to further press pick up and brand damage.

2. The “Penguin” Impact

Manipulating Reddit threads for improved brand sentiment or AI visibility may indeed work in the short term. However, it is logically something that Google and AI tools such as ChatGPT are going to want to stamp out. The very purpose of manipulation makes this clearly a “black-hat” tactic that Google and AI search tools will want to prevent.

Much like when the Penguin algorithm update punished websites for spammy and manipulative link-building practices, we cannot rule out the possibility of an equivalent action for Reddit manipulation if detected.

Long-Term Brand Building Using Reddit

• Use official Reddit accounts to give real and helpful feedback

Whilst faking customer replies is inherently negative, having an “official” stance within these threads from somebody within your company (who is officially representing the company) can, in fact, increase trust and brand perception whilst simultaneously potentially allowing you to influence the sentiment within key threads. In this sense, we can think of Reddit as an “Owned” channel.

As shown below, Reddit itself should be seen as social media, but your account on Reddit should be seen as owned media. Neither sits in earned media.

Do not outreach. We don’t want to manipulate.

We will use this sentiment to inform our PR strategy narrative or CRM.

Why aren’t more brands jumping at this? Because it’s hard. It takes a long time to provide useful information to build your community. ROI is hard to measure. But starting now can pay dividends in the future.

Hevy Fitness App - Example

The Co-Founder of fitness app Hevy is very active within the Hevy subreddit and proactively posts polls, fixes, and feature updates. This is a USP for a lot of users, knowing that their thoughts are listened to and things are actively acknowledged and worked on.

This concept can work for bigger brands as well to create a community of active customers on Reddit, which in turn can help AI visibility and sentiment naturally.

Philadelphia - Example

Not quite in the same remit, but a nice example of brands understanding Reddit is from Philadelphia cream cheese, using a paid ad to tap into a trend from subreddit /r/kitchenconfidential in which a user is posting daily with the challenge of perfectly cutting chives.

• Research any pain points

Reddit as a data source, particularly helping to understand the pain points customers are experiencing about your brand and products, and the elements they are enjoying, can allow us to craft the customer experience onsite and at a product level.

We can use this information to double down on the positives and lean into these within press releases, whilst also working to combat the negatives. In this sense, we’re using Reddit to indirectly influence future comments and reviews about the brand.

This is nothing new, but it becomes even more prominent with the rise of AI. Back in 2019, a Reddit thread influenced a strategy for one of our clients around common sizing issues with Common Project trainers across the U.S., UK and EU - seeing this, we wrote a guide and became a very successful piece for the client, influencing their rankings for the head term ‘Common Projects’.

How Can eCom Brands Actively Respond to Reddit (The Right Way)

So how can brands respond on Reddit as part of a wider community management project? We’ve given some common scenarios and how eCom brands could respond.

Brand not included in posts about brand/product recommendations, “i.e. what is a good, affordable hiking shoe”

If your brand isn’t being included by people in relevant subreddits and posts, general brand visibility may be the issue. From an SEO perspective, Digital PR is a good route to help get into relevant publications and “best” listicles, which help overall awareness of people looking for your product, which then indirectly feed into this type of user-generated recommendations. Definitely not the time to recommend your own brand.

Posts/comments mention negative experiences with products/brand

Longer term, you can feed this back to your product and marketing teams to help produce products/services that don’t have features that customers find negative, or help to allay concerns.

In the short term, responding in a genuine way from the brand perspective, recognising the issue and providing information about how this is/has been fixed or has been noticed by the brand can do wonders to show customers you are engaged and aware.

Posts giving a genuine and balanced review of the product/brand with pros/cons

Just because you can respond, doesn’t mean you have to! It can be worth keeping tabs on these types of posts, however, since they can give invaluable insight into dedicated and loyal customers to help your marketing and product teams lean into the positives and help combat the negatives.

Conclusion

Reddit remains one of the most highly cited sources in LLMs and AI search. To take advantage of Reddit in the long term, we think this should become a community management opportunity to help fulfil brand building and customer satisfaction.

Manipulative SEO activities (which try to unnaturally game Reddit comments and sentiment) are highly risky both for your brand and long-term performance. Instead, use existing Reddit comments as a research platform to influence and support your content strategy.