Reddit says its search referrals shrank by more than 1 million a week, on average, over October, and its CEO named Google’s generative search features as the main suspect. The disclosure came in the company’s third-quarter shareholder letter and on the earnings call, which Search Engine Journal covered on October 30.

The letter says the decline accelerated late in the third quarter and carried into October. The heaviest losses landed on visitors who were not signed in and on browser traffic. Some of it spilled into logged-in and app usage, because search is a common route back to the site for existing users.

Reddit also gave a warning about the fourth quarter. If the October pace holds, the letter says, total daily active uniques (DAUq) could shrink, by a percentage in the low double digits, from the present 130 million base. The letter does not state the weekly referral total behind the 1 million figure. It does not split the loss by search engine either, so the Google attribution rests on management’s view, not on a published breakdown.

The U.S. numbers show where the pain sits. Reddit’s U.S. DAUq slid from 53.2 million to 50.7 million across the last two quarters. Signed-out users fell from 30.1 million to 27.3 million, a drop of 2.8 million, which is larger than the whole U.S. decline because signed-in users edged up from 23.1 million to 23.4 million. Global DAUq held at 130.3 million, and outside the U.S. the metric rose 24% on a yearly basis. COO Jen Wong said part of the larger international marketing budget is meant to replace reach that search no longer delivers.

CEO Steve Huffman called the explanation a working hypothesis with two parts. The larger part is Google’s AI Overviews together with AI Mode, Google’s conversational search experience. In his view Google seems to be rolling both out aggressively, at home and abroad. Even in the mildest case, he argued, ordinary results get shoved lower on the screen. The second part is machine-translated pages, which he believes Google now ranks lower, mostly outside the U.S. Reddit did not say how much of the decline belongs to each factor.

Huffman said demand for Reddit has not changed and that “Google is crawling us as hard as ever.” He added that AI Mode “does not drive traffic,” for Reddit or, as far as he knows, anyone else. Those are statements from a platform with a commercial interest in the story, not independent measurement.

The response is a login wall. Reddit plans a full trial of a logged-in-only version during the fourth quarter, in chosen markets beyond the U.S., which neither document identifies. Huffman put it plainly: “This is a test, but we are going to make this transition.” Giving up some reach in exchange for deeper engagement is the likely cost. The letter cites ad targeting signals, protection of Reddit’s data corpus, and regulation as reasons. Huffman added that the bulk of scraping comes from visitors who are not signed in.

Per the letter, over 80% of what Reddit earns from monetization traces to signed-in and app users, which explains why the company will accept lower reach. Third-quarter revenue reached $895 million, up 53% from a year earlier.

For search teams, the unresolved variable is the boundary. Some version of the site will stay open ahead of a mandatory sign-in screen, Huffman said, and shared links are meant to keep working. The share of a thread that a Google visitor can read ahead of that screen will decide whether Reddit stays a useful citation and click destination, or becomes a source people can see in a result but cannot open freely.

Teams that rely on Reddit threads as a traffic source or a brand-mention channel should check their referral logs by country now, because the login test starts outside the U.S. and any early drop there will show up in that data first.

Search Engine Journal, reporting on Reddit’s third-quarter 2026 shareholder letter and earnings call, published October 30, 2026.