Vetted.ai: Unveiling the Secrets of Google's Partnership with Reddit

Vetted.ai is one of many AI chatbots that are gaining traction in Google search.

It’s not much, maybe 10,000 monthly visits, but Google found the site to be the best result for ~100 keywords.

Trend: growing.

Organic traffic and top 3 keywords for vetted ai

When you click on a result from Vetted AI, a chatbot page opens up with information related to your search query.

Vetted’s AI chatbot

Vetted’s AI chatbot (Image Credit: Kevin Indig)

Vetted AI is your shopping assistant for specific questions like [zep vs draino], [vornado mvh vs vh200], or [ugg ansley vs dakota]. It can generate content for any product comparison you need.

zep vs drano

Screenshot from search for [zep vs drano], Google, March 2024 (Image Credit: Kevin Indig)

Reddit, which is highlighted as result No. 3 in the screenshot, has seen a rise in search engine rankings recently. Unlike AI chatbots, Reddit offers a human touch, experiential content, and unoptimized posts.

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Sundar Pich-AI

Google’s $60 million deal with Reddit is more than it seems at first.

Google is surfacing more content from forums in the SERPs is to counter-balance AI content.

Verification is like the ultimate AI watermark. When it comes to Reddit, it may not stop people from using AI to make posts or comments. However, thanks to moderation and karma, the likelihood of this happening is lower compared to Google search.

Yes, Content Goblins have already taken aim at Reddit, but most of the 73 million daily active users provide useful answers.1

Content moderators punish spam with bans or even kicks.

Karma is the main factor that drives quality on Reddit. It is a user's reputation score that shows their contributions to the community.

Users can increase their authority and trustworthiness on Reddit through simple up or downvotes. These qualities are essential in Google's quality systems.

The press release states that Google's deal with Reddit will enhance the display of Reddit information on Google products, making it easier for users to engage with Reddit communities and conversations.

However, the primary motivation behind the Google-Reddit deal is actually Karma.

Google regularly crawls reddit.com to gather content for training its machine learning models. This means that Google already has access to Reddit's content and is most likely using it for this purpose.

Moreover, Google prominently displays Reddit content in search results through high organic ranks, as seen in the Hidden Gem update, and through the Discussions & Forums SERP Feature.

Reddit.com has seen the fastest growth in search of any domain and is now one of the web’s largest.

Reddit is at the same traffic level as Amazon

Reddit is currently experiencing the same level of traffic as Amazon, according to Kevin Indig's findings in an image.

By utilizing Reddit's API, Google has the opportunity to gather Karma data to improve its models on content that users find valuable. This could lead to more accurate and helpful Reddit responses being featured in search results. One way this can be achieved is by filtering out irrelevant or rule-breaking posts.

The implications go way beyond model training and lead right into the heart of what users want out of search.

Authentic Reviews

Reddit’s Karma is especially valuable when it comes to surfacing authentic experiences in search.

Google still has miles to go when it comes to product reviews.

HouseFresh recently highlighted how big brands are not conducting thorough testing as they claim. It is disheartening for us, a team dedicated to testing air purifiers, to see our independent site being outranked by well-known publications that fail to even check if a company is bankrupt before recommending their products to millions of readers.

You may remember a study from Germany that discovered a successful business model where having a separate section for low-quality reviews can help websites make money and stay afloat. Publishers often rely on reviews for income.

A new study by Schultheiß et al. explores the relationship between SEO and content quality on medical websites through a user study. The research reveals that there is a negative correlation between a page's level of optimization and how knowledgeable it appears to users, suggesting that SEO could potentially impact the subjective quality of a page.

Reddit, however, is not optimized and more human. Some may even call it in-ai-efficient. Users turn to Reddit, the top destination for authentic reviews, when they prefer opinions from fellow users over polished reviews from companies or affiliates. In certain cases, people value reviews from real people.

There is a speed benefit of using Reddit’s AI, too.

Similar to indexing APIs, Google gets all Reddit content via API instead of having to cough up crawl budget for the massive domain.

Wikipedia holds ~60 million pages.

Reddit had over 300 million posts in 2020 alone. The site is big and getting bigger.

We are excited to share that Reddit has entered into a new Cloud partnership that will allow us to incorporate advanced AI-powered features through Vertex AI. With the help of Vertex AI, Reddit aims to elevate the search and other functions on our platform.

Interestingly, Reddit has chosen to utilize Google's Vertex AI, specifically the enterprise Gemini models, to enhance its search capabilities. This decision comes full circle, as Reddit's previous subpar search function led many users to resort to searching for Reddit content on Google instead.

The Hidden Gems update, Google’s Discussions & Forums SERP Feature, and the eventual Google deal might have never happened without such demand for Reddit results.

Ai-fficient

AI efficiencies are small improvements made possible by AI technology. The main advantage of AI lies in enhancing the speed and quality of tasks rather than introducing completely new concepts.

I frequently rely on ChatGPT to help me create more efficient spreadsheet formulas and macros.

I never learned RegEx well, and my JavaScript/Python skills merely prevent me from embarrassing myself in front of developers.

With LLMs, I can solve these problems quickly and independently.

This week, I sorted nearly 20,000 keywords into eight main topics for a client, all done in under an hour and for less than $20. AI is a game-changer for no-code.

Websites are also benefiting from AI efficiencies in a similar way: it's not a new concept, just a more improved one.

Reddit utilizes Vortex AI for its operations, while companies like Zillow have already implemented this technology, as discussed further in the second State of AI report.

Amazon and eBay have made it easier for merchants to start selling by enabling them to take a picture of a product and automatically generate a title, description, and product features using AI.

Amazon creates helpful AI review summaries (inspiration for SGE?).

Redfin allows visitors to customize interior design with AI.7

AI makes products better instead of creating new ones.

However, when it comes to product advice and reviews, we want unoptimized, in-ai-fficient information. Just raw, authentic feedback.

We want to provide an unbiased list of products that are not influenced by the affiliate commissions they generate.

As users have become more savvy, they can easily spot reviews on Google that are driven by financial incentives. Similarly, messages like "I think this resource would be helpful for your audience" and "Let's connect and find business synergies" often have ulterior motives such as obtaining backlinks and closing deals.

User Intent: Amateur Experience

One way to make reviews more authentic is to use amateur opinions.

If I worked in the reviews industry, I would talk to regular people and include their thoughts in reviews, but only for items that don't require specialized knowledge.

Google's update to the quality rater guidelines by including "experience" suggests that not all searches require input from experts.

Some queries require more experience than expertise. Using SERP Features can help us understand the user intent behind a query. A popular Reddit post shows that searchers value insights and experiences from non-experts.

For instance, when looking for the best GPU for your computer setup, you would likely prefer advice from an expert. On the other hand, when searching for card games suitable for couples, hearing from other couples' experiences would be more valuable.

Google is aiming to prioritize search results based on human signals like Karma rather than just optimized for embeddings and backlinks. This shift focuses on providing more authentic and relevant content to users.

The recent Google-Reddit partnership marks a significant step towards achieving this goal of surfacing helpful and valuable content for online users.

1 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1713445/000162828024006294/reddits-1q423.htm

2 https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/expanded-reddit-partnership/

3 HouseFresh recently published an article comparing David to digital Goliaths. Check it out here: https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/#lwptoc1.

4 Zillow has launched a groundbreaking AI-powered natural language search feature, making it the first in the real estate industry. Learn more about it at: https://investors.zillowgroup.com/investors/news-and-events/news/news-details/2023/Zillows-new-AI-powered-natural-language-search-is-a-first-in-real-estate/default.aspx.

Paragraph 1: Amazon has created a generative AI tool to assist its sellers. The tool aims to help sellers optimize their product listings and improve their sales on the platform.

Paragraph 2: eBay has also developed a powerful AI tool called the Magical Listing Tool. This tool leverages the power of AI to make selling on eBay faster, easier, and more accurate for sellers.

7 https://www.redfin.com/news/introducing-redfin-redesign-ai-tool/

Featured Image: Lyna ™

Editor's P/S:

The article highlights the growing influence of AI chatbots and Reddit in search engine results. Vetted.ai, an AI chatbot, is gaining traction and providing specific product comparisons. Reddit, on the other hand, offers a human touch and experiential content, which is seen as a counterbalance to AI-generated content.

Google's recent deal with Reddit is seen as a strategic move to enhance the display of Reddit information in search results. The article suggests that Google is prioritizing human signals, such as Karma, to surface more authentic and relevant content. This shift is driven by the increasing demand for unoptimized, real-world experiences and opinions in search results.