TL;DR
- The headline number is misleading. On four engines, Reddit is 17% to 29% of top-site citations across all topics. On our 343 "best X" questions it's 2% of cited pages.
- It depends on the engine. In the latest scan of our own prompts, only Google's AI Overviews cited Reddit. ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity cited none.
- Find your threads. Four steps to get the exact threads AI cites for your prompts.
- Join or skip. Check how many days a thread stays cited before you spend an hour on it.
- Don't spam. Say who you are. Answer first. Reddit's rules ask you to take part for real and not to spam.
Does AI name your brand? Check your site.
"AI loves Reddit. Go post on Reddit."
You've read that advice. Probably this week.
It's half true. And the false half costs you hours.
So I checked. Which engines cite Reddit? For which questions? And for our own prompts, which exact threads?
Then I checked if those threads stay cited. Most guides skip that part.
Two very different Reddit numbers
Here's the number everyone quotes.
Ahrefs publishes the most-cited sites per engine each month. September 2026, US, all topics:
| Engine | Reddit's share | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Gemini | 28.5% | 1st |
| Perplexity | 21.6% | 1st |
| Google AI Overviews | 18.5% | 2nd, after YouTube |
| ChatGPT | 16.8% | 1st |
(Each number is Reddit's share of the citations that go to the 50 most-cited sites.)
Big numbers. So Reddit is the answer?
Now look at buying questions.
Our leaderboard scans 343 "best X" questions on five engines. Of the pages those engines cite:
- 77% are listicles.
- 10% are vendor pages.
- 2% are Reddit threads.
Two percent.
Why the gap? Different questions.
My reading: "all topics" includes many everyday questions, where people want to hear from other people.
"Best CRM for a small agency" is a buying question. There, the engines cite lists.
So the first rule: don't trust a share. Check your own prompts.
Why AI engines use Reddit
Two reasons you can verify.
1. Deals.
Google expanded its partnership with Reddit on 22 February 2024. Google got access to Reddit's Data API.
OpenAI announced a Reddit partnership in May 2024.
2. Reading is not citing.
This is the part people miss.
In an Ahrefs study of 1.4 million ChatGPT prompts:
- 67.8% of the URLs ChatGPT retrieved but didn't cite were Reddit.
- 1.93% of the Reddit URLs it pulled through its Reddit channel got cited.
So ChatGPT reads a lot of Reddit. And credits very little of it.
That cuts both ways.
A thread can influence an answer without a citation. And you can't see that in any source list.
And it moves fast.
In Semrush's data, ChatGPT cited Reddit in close to 60% of responses in early August 2025. By mid-September: about 10%.
A Reddit plan built in August was out of date in September.
What we found on our own prompts
We track 7 buyer prompts for AI SEO Tracker. Five engines. Scanned about daily, with gaps (about 57 checked days in the last 90).
I asked our MCP server for every Reddit thread the engines cite.
Four threads. Out of 215 cited pages. That's under 2%.
Close to the leaderboard's 2%.
Then I checked each thread's history. Which engine cites it? On how many days?
All four threads look the same.
- Google AI Overviews: cited each thread on 1 to 3 of about 57 checked days.
- ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity: never. Not once in 90 days.
And those 1 to 3 days were all in the last 10 days.
So for our prompts, right now, a Reddit comment might help on Google.
On the other four engines? The lists matter more. Zapier's list was cited by Gemini on 41 of 41 checked days in the last 60 days.
Small sample. 7 prompts, one brand, one category. Yours will differ.
That's the point.
How to find the threads AI cites
By hand
- Write 10 to 20 prompts your buyers would type.
- Run each one in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google.
- Open the sources of each answer. Copy every
reddit.comURL into a sheet. Add the engine and the date. - Do it again next week. Keep the threads that show up twice.
Slow. But free.
With an agent
Connect our MCP server and paste this:
Call aiseo_list_sources with domain "reddit", then with domain "quora". For each thread, call aiseo_get_source_history. Tell me which threads are still cited, by which engine, and on how many days.
It returns the threads, the prompts they answer, and a day-by-day history per engine.
The agent stops at drafts. It can't post to Reddit for you. Good.
Join or skip
Not every cited thread is worth your hour.
Three checks:
- How many days is it cited? One day is noise. Many days is a pattern.
- By which engine? If your buyers use ChatGPT and only Google cites the thread, it's lower on the list.
- Is the thread still open? Old threads can be archived. Then you can't comment.
Our four threads fail the first check today. Cited on 1 to 3 days each.
So we watch them. We don't write four comments yet.
How to comment without being spam
Reddit's own rules say it:
"Participate authentically in communities where you have a personal interest"
And don't spam.
Do
- Say who you are. "I work on X" in the first line.
- Answer the question first. Your product comes second, if at all.
- Add one fact people can check. A price. A limit. A test you ran.
- Read the subreddit rules. Some ban self-promotion outright.
Do not
- Drop a bare link.
- Use a fake or bought account.
- Paste the same reply in ten threads.
- Ask friends to upvote.
Google is on the same side here. Its AI search guide says that seeking inauthentic mentions is not as helpful as it might seem.
A comment example. The thread asks for AI visibility tools:
I build AI SEO Tracker, so I'm biased. What I'd check in any tool: which engines it scans, and whether you can see the cited URLs per engine. Ours covers five engines and costs $49 for a one-time report. It doesn't scan Claude or Grok. If you need those, look at the tools in this thread that list them.
Short. Honest about the bias. Names a limit.
That's a comment a moderator leaves up.
FAQ
Does Reddit help with GEO?
Sometimes. It depends on the question and the engine.
Across all topics, Reddit is a top-cited site. On "best X" buying questions in our data, it's 2% of cited pages.
Check your own prompts before you invest.
Which AI engines cite Reddit most?
In Ahrefs' September 2026 data across all topics: Gemini 28.5%, Perplexity 21.6%, AI Overviews 18.5%, ChatGPT 16.8% (shares of the top 50 sites' citations).
In the latest scan of our 7 prompts, only AI Overviews cited Reddit.
Should I create a subreddit for my brand?
It doesn't hurt. But I have only one example: r/SEMrush, run by Semrush staff. AI Overviews cited one thread there on 1 of 57 checked days.
One of our four threads sat in r/SEMrush, a subreddit run by Semrush staff. The others were in r/webflow, r/LLMO_SaaS and r/GEO_optimization.
How do I know if my comment worked?
Run the same prompts again. Check if the thread is still cited, and if the answer now names you.
One answer is noise. Look at two weeks.
Can an AI agent post to Reddit for me?
Ours can't. It reads data and drafts. You post.
And I wouldn't want one to. See the spam section.
What about Quora?
Same method. On our prompts, the engines cited 4 Quora threads, the same count as Reddit.
