Reddit CEO Steve Huffman criticized Google's AI Overviews for reducing referral traffic, raising concerns for crypto communities that rely on Reddit for discovery.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman used the company's Q2 2026 earnings call to criticize Google's AI Overviews. The AI-generated summaries have not delivered referral traffic comparable to the old "10 blue links" format, he told investors on July 30.
Reddit reported results that beat analyst expectations. The company guided Q3 revenue between $860 million and $870 million.
Google's AI Overviews answer queries directly on the search results page. Users get a machine-generated summary instead of clicking through to Reddit threads, blog posts, or news articles. That shift creates "uncertainty" for platforms that depend on search discovery, Huffman said.
Google had integrated Reddit content into AI Overviews by May 2026, pulling Reddit's own words into its summaries. Reddit hasn't seen click-through traffic from the integration comparable to traditional search results, Huffman said.
For crypto communities, the change matters. The r/CryptoCurrency subreddit has served as a primary venue for retail investor sentiment, project analysis, and crowd-sourced due diligence. Reddit's own crypto experiment – the Community Points program, which included the MOON token on Ethereum's Arbitrum network – phased out by November 2023 due to scaling issues. The platform remains a central forum for crypto due diligence.
Reddit has pursued direct user acquisition and product improvements to reduce reliance on Google's search traffic. Management pointed to those efforts as a factor in the strong Q3 guidance, the company said.
Reddit has also controlled how AI companies use its data. In 2024, Huffman mandated licensing agreements for firms like Microsoft and Anthropic that wanted to train models on Reddit content. The company plans to continue investing in direct user acquisition and data-licensing deals, Huffman said on the call.
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