The most used AI search tools love Reddit
If you’ve been in the SEO game as long as us, you’ve probably dabbled with Reddit marketing at some point. Reddit has been taking up more and more space in Google search results for years, so it’s not unusual for brands with an advanced SEO team to include Reddit in their content strategy.
But with the rise of AI search, Reddit’s value as a digital marketing channel has exploded. Early studies and reports on the most cited domains by various publishers always point to Reddit as the most (or one of the most) cited domains by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, as well as Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode. For example, Reddit’s LLM referral traffic hit an all-time high in May 2026, with ChatGPT driving 87.4% of AI-referred sessions and Reddit commanding 40.1% of all LLM referral traffic.
Our first major AI (LLM) citation data study, to be published as part of the launch of Cairrot’s Universal Visibility Index, confirms these findings and adds to the discussion by included local-level searches in the US/Canada, as well as a growing list of country-specific indexes including Japan, Korea, and Germany.
How often different LLMs cite Reddit in their responses in our data
In our own analysis of over 1.5 million high-intent prompts, Reddit is one of the 3 overall most cited websites whenever prompting ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity for brand recommendations.
About the study
The Cairrot team analyzed over 1.5 million prompts and tracked results across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and DeepSeek.
We analyzed this data to achieve three primary goals:
- Confirm Reddit’s share of Citations for high-intent prompts and queries.
- Discover how location affects Reddit’s visibility in LLMs, including “local” and “international” searches.
- Compare differences in Reddit citations between major LLMs ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
We gathered this full data set as part of the launch of our Universal Visibility Index, the first AI Visibility index done with localized searches across every major market in the US/Canada and abroad. This is a preview of our Reddit-specific findings from the data, including early observations from our international data sets for local-level prompts specific to Japanese and Korean markets.
Reddit in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity citations
Across the last three months of data, Reddit ranked as the number two most cited domain overall, behind only YouTube, and it landed in the top three cited domains for every major LLM we tracked except Claude and DeepSeek.
Reddit’s citation share by AI platform
| Provider | Reddit domain rank | Prompts citing Reddit | All citations from Reddit |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | #3 most cited | 7.8% 2,646 of 34,023 runs | 1.34% 3,322 of 248,168 |
| Gemini | #3 most cited | 12.7% 3,622 of 28,621 runs | 1.60% 5,470 of 341,252 |
| Perplexity | #2 most cited | 16.6% 5,596 of 33,775 runs | 2.05% 7,063 of 345,076 |
Observation: Reddit is even more valuable for “Local” AEO/GEO
When we added aUS *city to the prompt, Reddit’s role shifted noticeably.
What happens to Reddit when you add a city to the prompt
| Provider | Prompt share | Citation share | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Non-local | Local | Non-local | Local | |
| ChatGPT | 8.1% | 6.0% ↓ 2.1 pts | 1.39% | 0.93% |
| Gemini | 11.7% | 17.6% ↑ 5.9 pts | 1.44% | 2.51% |
| Perplexity | 15.4% | 23.1% ↑ 7.7 pts | 1.83% | 3.17% |
- ChatGPT: Reddit’s prompt-level presence actually dropped with a location added, from 8.1% of prompts (non-local) to 6.0% (local). Its citation share held roughly flat, moving from 1.39% to 0.93%.
- Gemini: Reddit’s presence rose with a location added, from 11.7% of prompts (non-local) to 17.6% (local), and citation share rose from 1.44% to 2.51%.
- Perplexity: Reddit’s presence rose the most with a location added, from 15.4% of prompts (non-local) to 23.1% (local), and citation share rose from 1.83% to 3.17%.
*City prompts included a mix of U.S. cities such as Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, San Antonio, Phoenix, Miami, Manhattan, Fort Worth, Tampa, among others.
What % of AI citations were Reddit in localized prompts?
- ChatGPT: 0.93% of citations in local prompts (336 of 36,223).
- Gemini: 2.51% of citations in local prompts (1,276 of 50,835).
- Perplexity: 3.17% of citations in local prompts (1,777 of 56,138).
Reddit impacts visibility in international markets, too
Reddit’s influence is not limited to English-language, US-based queries. Localizing prompts to Japan and South Korea, two markets outside our default English-language searches, showed Reddit citations rising even further above baseline.
Reddit citations when prompts are localized abroad
| Market | Runs with a Reddit citation | Unique prompts with a Reddit citation |
|---|---|---|
| No locationBaseline | 8.2% 9,695 of 118,946 | 45.1% 1,802 of 3,996 |
| Japan | 12.4% 356 of 2,878 | 43.5% 189 of 434 |
| South Korea | 15.7% 422 of 2,681 | 60.6% 246 of 406 |
In our default (no location specified) queries, 8.2% of runs and 45.1% of unique prompts already returned a Reddit citation. In Japan-localized prompts, that rose to 12.4% of runs and 43.5% of unique prompts (189 of 434). In South Korea-localized prompts, it rose to 15.7% of runs (422 of 2,681) and 60.6% of unique prompts (246 of 406). Many of the Reddit threads surfaced were hyperlocal too, including r/Living_in_Korea and r/JapanFinance discussions on financial advisors and everyday services for expats.
Examples of Reddit marketing for AI search
Cairrot’s Reddit data gives brands a direct way to monitor how their category shows up in Reddit conversations that AI engines pull from. It tracks mention volume, sentiment, and engagement together, surfacing which subreddits carry the most relevant discussion so teams know exactly where to focus instead of monitoring Reddit broadly.
The “Top Reddit posts” table shown above (sortable by upvotes or comments) highlights the specific threads worth watching or joining, such as active buyer-research conversations where a brand can contribute a useful answer while the discussion is still live. Beyond engagement, Cairrot also tracks which of these threads are actually being cited by AI models, helping teams see not just what’s popular on Reddit, but what’s actually shaping AI-generated answers.
An observation about Claude and DeepSeek
We noticed Reddit being cited by Claude as late as March, when this seemed to be corrected. Looking at the underlying data in the reporting dashboard, this pattern holds up. In Claude’s Top Domains & Unique Pages panel, reddit.com doesn’t appear anywhere in the top 10. Filtering directly for Reddit citations from Claude returns 0 cited runs out of 19,759 total over the last three months. Reddit was cited in the past and then phased out.
DeepSeek tells a similar top-line story. Its top 10 domains are also dominated by other sites with no Reddit presence found. Filtering for Reddit citations from DeepSeek shows 160 cited runs out of 19,178 total (0.8%). That’s real, but still far below Reddit’s biggest citers by cited-run count: Perplexity (5,596), Gemini (3,622), and GPT (2,646), out of 12,024 total Reddit-citing runs across all providers.
Want to view the full report?
Want to go deeper into the data? Request the full study for the complete 1.5M+ prompt dataset, methodology, localized findings, and full Reddit citation analysis across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and DeepSeek.
Get early access to our universal visibility analysis for more AEO insights
Request early access to our AI visibility data studies derived from the Universal Visibility Index (UVI), including AEO insights for optimizing your brand on Reddit, YouTube, and other channels AI prefers to cite.
