E388: Recent news - Reddit blocks all search engines other than Google from crawling it. This effectively means the only search engine that can recommend Reddit results is Google.
This is only several months after Google’s $60,000,000/year deal with Reddit to access Reddit’s user generated content for training Google’s AI models.
For a long time people have been manipulating Reddit to rank their brand for their desired keywords. This is called Parasite SEO, it goes against both Reddit’s and Google’s Terms of Service, and it’s become even more common recently after Google’s prioritization of Reddit in its results.
Here’s why this news is positive for Reddit Parasite SEO.
The article sharing the news: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/reddit-just-disappeared-from-most-search-engines-here-s-why/ar-BB1qDztQ?ocid=winp2fptaskbar&cvid=a185953b1dd141f089ae926a17ae1dc2&ei=9
The podcast episode going deeper into how Reddit Parasite SEO is performed: https://youtu.be/YBWggQ-ytBc
00:00 Introduction to Parasite SEO 00:19 Importance of Reddit's Domain Authority 00:46 Google's Stance on AI-Generated Content 02:00 Reddit's Rise in Search Engine Rankings 02:42 Breaking News: Reddit Blocks Non-Google Search Engines 03:54 Implications of Reddit's New Robots.txt 06:50 The Future of Parasite SEO with Reddit 09:58 Wrap-Up
#seo #searchengineoptimization #blackhat #digitalmarketing
Let's talk about parasite search engine optimization. If you don't know what parasite search engine optimization, it's hijacking a big website's SEO domain authority or status or high rates of engagement in order to rank your brand on Google for the keywords that you want. This is very often done with Reddit. Reddit has very high domain authority. It's 92 out of 100 domain authority. That's very high posts on Reddit get a lot of comments. In fact, I see right now that I have 18 comments waiting for me to read on a post that I put up yesterday and forgot about. Oh, cool. It's done really well, really, really well. 19 comments, actually, and Google is prioritizing user generated content in the search engine results pages. That's because many blogs, many independent blogs are getting spammed with AI written text. A lot of webmasters don't realize how bad that is. And they're just using AI written text to ruin their brands, ruin their trust from their readers, but also ruin the trust that Google has in them. Google hates seeing AI generated articles, even though Google uses AI to summarize articles and provide AI written snippets in their results, but Google does not want to see that themselves because they don't want to risk training off AI written text. And a lot of users don't want to see that too. Users don't trust it. In a lot of regards, users don't trust it. Users trust it if they form the question and ask themselves within chat GPT or Gemini, and they ask more questions that if they read it on a random blog, they don't trust it as much. Either way, it comes down to Google prioritizing user generated content, and it's not just on Reddit. It's video descriptions, as I've talked about on the show before. It's Quora, it's forums. So many places as YouTube, so many places where there is user generated content, Reddit is one of the biggest places. In fact, last year, in terms of market share, Reddit was ranked 80 on the search engine results pages, Reddit was ranked 80. And now Reddit is ranked five. Reddit went up from 80 to five, a 75 spot increase that Reddit went in terms of market share on Google. And the reason that I'm talking about this and the reason that I'm talking about Reddit is because somebody in my comments a couple months ago asked, do you think Harasite SEO on Reddit will work for a while? So that was a question. And rather than give the direct answer, I'm going to read this breaking news. And the breaking news is Reddit just disappeared for most search engines. Here's why. I think the answer will become obvious once I read this. So this is the news, unless you use Google search engine exclusively, you probably won't see Reddit results populate when you search something, at least for now. According to a report from 404 media, any search engine that doesn't rely on Google's indexing will no longer be able to crawl or scan Reddit site for new information. This is thanks to Reddit's updated robots.txt file, which took effect on July 1st, 2024, a robots.txt file. If you don't know, that tells spiders how to treat your site. Now it's crazy about this news is, well, I'm jumping ahead of myself. This is kind of crazy. The article continues, admin trace through on Reddit dev wrote, unfortunately, we've seen an uptick in obviously commercial entities who scrape Reddit and argue that they are not bound by our terms or policies. Translated, Reddit doesn't want its site crawled for data used to train or inform generative AI models that companies then charge for. This means popular alternatives to Google search, like Microsoft being duck duck go brave and others will lose many search results. As someone who often tax Reddit onto the end of my searches in non Google engines, that's incredibly frustrating. And although Reddit spokesperson Tim Rasschmitz told the verge, this is not at all related to our recent partnership with Google. That's a little hard to believe. So this is so crazy. It feels like a scandal. Reddit is blocking non Google search engines in its robots.txt. But in its robots.txt, it's kind of ironic because Reddit says literally the second line of this read it, it's welcome to Reddit's robots.txt. Reddit believes in an open internet, but not the misuse of public content. But Reddit believes in an open internet. And then they say to other search engines like tuck.go. No, sorry, you can't can't recommend Reddit. Reddit claims that this is not due to the recent partnership with Google. Here's the next part in this article. Is this a pay to access blockade from Reddit? In February, 2024, Reuters reported that Reddit signed a contract with Google worth roughly $60 million a year. This contract essentially allows Reddit to utilize the vast amount of human written content available on Reddit to train its AI models. So Google is paying $60 million a year to train its AI models off Reddit's human written content, considering Google is the only company so far to strike up such a deal with Reddit, actually open AI has a recent deal with Reddit too. It's difficult to believe Reddit's decision to update its robots.txt.txt file isn't related to the recent partnership with Google. Even if Reddit doesn't intend to make its search results exclusive to Google, the decision is still at least somewhat related to the partnership with Google because clearly Reddit feels that it can strike similar deals with the other search engines in rap smits statement to the verge he continued. We have been in discussions with multiple search engines. We have been unable to reach agreements with all of them since some are unwilling or unable to make enforceable promises regarding their use of Reddit content, including their use for AI. A Microsoft spokesperson told search engine land, we respect the robots.txt standard being stopped crawling Reddit after they implemented their updated robots.txt file on July 1st, which prohibits all crawling of their site. But there's no mention of whether Microsoft is considering striking a deal with Reddit regarding using or strictly not using Reddit data in training generative AI models. If no other sites sign a contract with Reddit regarding the use of its data in AI training, Google will have a huge advantage over the competition. This would be an eerie step closer to further monopolizing the search engine industry without popular Reddit results. The best Google Chrome alternatives just got a little less shiny. So Reddit is very important to Google. Do I think Reddit will continue to be possible for Parasite SEO? Now, you know me, I don't recommend block cat strategies on the on the show. And Parasite SEO goes against the terms of service of Reddit. You know, often people are buying up votes. People just Google buy Reddit up votes and they're up voting posts on Reddit. And then they're editing the posts after to recommend their brand. I give a whole crazy breakdown about this, actually, on episode three, 73 of this podcast is Reddit Parasite SEO to get podcast listeners. That's the episode and I give a crazy breakdown. But it goes against the terms of service. People are buying up votes. I'm supposed to do that using platforms to get your brand ranking for your desired keywords that are not your own site that goes against Google's terms of service. People are posting and then several days later, they're editing the posts to recommend their brands goes against Reddit's terms of service again. So I don't recommend this stuff on the show because it's not in my best interest to recommend this stuff, but do I think it will work for a while longer? I think it's going to work for a while longer. I think it's going to work for a for a long time, actually, because part of it as well, if I was Google, this is what I would do. I would make it so that any Reddit post that was edited after the first 48 hours, that post is not included in Google's index editing a post to put in your link is very common with Parasite SEO on Reddit. So within the first 48 hours, a post is cool. It's edited within that time after then it's de-indexed. However, this deal that Google has with Reddit has been around for a while now. That has not happened. I track a bunch of different queries around Parasite SEO on Reddit queries that I just originally found browsing Reddit myself. I said, huh, this, I looked at this a few days ago. It did not have this link. Now it has this link and clearly there's a keyword in it. Is it ranking for this keyword? Oh, it is. And so I could see that this has not happened. And if this has not happened yet, I don't know if this is even going to happen in the future because it's been months and this isn't even a crazy change to make Reddit tracks the dates of the edits in its posts. It's possible that Google will do this, but given that it hasn't happened yet, I'm not even sure that it will happen. So to answer the question, just to give my thoughts after seeing this news, especially do I think and it's been years Google could have had like a partnership with Reddit years ago where they did this. People have been using Reddit Parasite SEO for a long time. So to answer the question, do I think Reddit Parasite SEO will be around for a lot longer while I'm not recommending it. I don't recommend that stuff on the show, but I do think it will work for a long time. And this is crazy news, crazy news that you can't use Bing to access Reddit. You can't use DuckDuckGo to access Reddit. And it feels like a scandal because Reddit says in the robots. Text, we believe in an open internet. That's what I wanted to share on this episode of the podcast, some breaking Google news, some breaking SEO news that has direct implications to a lot of the stuff that I talk about on the show. This is episode 378. Holy moly, losing track of how many episodes of this show I've made because I do this every day, seven days a week, and I think this is 378. Yeah. Whoa, no, this is episode 388. I've done this show for 388 days in a row. Crazy. The episode 388 of my daily digital marketing podcast, The Edward Show. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you again tomorrow.
