Reddit shares slide as site traffic reportedly falls after Google expands AI Overviews

Reddit’s stock fell sharply on Thursday after a widely cited traffic snapshot suggested the platform lost ground in global web visits, a development investors and commentators tied to Google’s growing use of AI in search results. According to the market reporting, Reddit shares dropped about 6%, following a post that referenced Similarweb measurements showing visits down roughly 13% overall.

The same report said the decline was concentrated among users who were logged out at the time of visiting Reddit, noting that most of the lost traffic came from that segment. By contrast, the share of visits associated with logged-in users was described as less impacted, according to the account.

The traffic change was attributed in the commentary to Google’s “AI Overviews,” a feature that generates AI-written summaries inside search results. The argument presented to readers was that AI Overviews can satisfy some search intent without prompting users to click through to websites, which can reduce referral traffic even when overall search volume remains steady.

Market coverage characterized the effect as largely not driven by changes in Reddit’s own content or engagement. Instead, it framed the timing and direction of the traffic movement as consistent with a search-discovery shift, where fewer people may need to leave Google to get the information they asked for.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, runs the search engine and related AI experiences that power AI Overviews. For publishers and social platforms like Reddit, the business question has been whether Google’s in-results summarization reduces click-through rates and how quickly audiences migrate to alternative discovery channels when Google keeps more answers on its own pages.

Even within that broad context, investors are likely to treat the result as a announcement about dependency risk. If AI Overviews increasingly capture attention in search, sites that rely on referrals could see volatility in traffic patterns that are difficult to control, particularly if they do not have direct relationships with users that bypass search.

Still, the post did not provide details that would let an outside observer fully confirm causation. It described the correlation between Google’s AI Overviews and reduced visits, but it did not quantify how much of the change was specifically caused by AI Overviews versus other factors that can influence traffic, including seasonality, search algorithm updates unrelated to AI summaries, or changes in user behavior across logged-in versus logged-out states.

What to watch next is whether Reddit’s traffic trends stabilize or continue to deteriorate in subsequent weeks, and whether Alphabet addresses the underlying click-through and publisher impact more directly in public materials or product updates. For market participants, any further disclosures from Reddit, including traffic mix trends and advertising performance tied to search referrals, would likely matter as much as the share price reaction.