Last week, Promptwatch released a piece of analysis which showed that Reddit’s share of ChatGPT search citations fell from an average of 3.83% between July 18 and August 7 to just 0.52% between August 14 and 17. An 86% decline. Many websites reported massive drops in AI mentions.
If you’re not up to speed on the latest in AEO, let’s do a quick recap of what this is and why it matters.
When ChatGPT answers a question using web search, it often breaks the original prompt into multiple smaller searches. This is called “query fan-out”. Say someone asks a question like “What’s the best accounting software for a small business?”. ChatGPT might conduct a handful of web searches for pricing, reviews, integrations, customer complaints, and alternatives before assembling the final answer.
Reddit became prominent in those answers because it is (or maybe, was…?) full of specific, conversational discussions about products and services. In late 2024, and especially throughout 2025, Reddit increasingly became the place people went to find “real” opinions. I even sometimes (although less so now for reasons outlined below) add “search Reddit” to my AI-research tasks.
OpenAI’s partnership with Reddit, announced in May 2024, also formalised this relationship.
For marketers, this created a bit of a frenzy. Get your brand mentioned in relevant Reddit threads and there was a chance ChatGPT would find those comments, absorb them into an answer and cite the thread (and your brand). Free eyeballs. What marketer doesn’t love free eyeballs?
You know it’s a frenzy when you start seeing agencies appear that do “Reddit AEO”. Yes, people charging for replying to threads mentioning your brand.
Why did this drop happen?
While we can’t know for sure, the leading theory is that ChatGPT changed how its query fan-out works.
Promptwatch found that, on August 8, ChatGPT’s use of the site: search operator jumped from around 0.4% of fan-out queries to nearly 17%. The average number of searches per response also increased. In simple terms, ChatGPT started searching specific websites directly, rather than relying as heavily on whatever it found while searching the open web.
Those - more targeted - searches are more likely to point at a company’s own website, government portals, documentation, and trade associations. And less likely to point at Reddit.
The major Reddit citation collapse did not happen until August 14, six days after the query-fan-out change. So while the timeline is not perfect, Promptwatch seems to unnecessarily hedge to me. Given this information, it seems highly likely that this is the cause.
Why would OpenAI do this?
The most charitable explanation is quality. Reddit is useful, but it is also noisy, repetitive, and - most importantly - easy to manipulate. What made it useful to begin with - real humans (largely) giving (largely) honest opinions on things - made it game-able and, importantly and increasingly, valuable.
OpenAI may also want more control over the kinds of sources ChatGPT cites. A company’s documentation or an official regulator’s website is easier to evaluate, maintain, and defend than an anonymous comment buried in a seven-year-old thread.
Does this sound familiar? That’s right. We’re back to good old domain authority.
What this means for you
I’m not against using short-term tactics to drive growth. The opposite, in fact. Some of the fastest-growing companies spot a growth hack early and milk it until the milk isn’t worth the squeeze. Then they find the next one and repeat.
If you got into Reddit-to-ChatGPT in 2024, or early in 2025, you probably reaped a lot of benefits. If you are only getting into it now, you are arriving as the party is wrapping up. The booze is all gone and all that is left is some crisps and contaminated dip.
We’ve seen this time and time again.
FAQ schema was a useful organic search lever from around 2019 to 2023, until Google dramatically reduced the benefit of it, in some cases even penalising if the FAQ was forced.
Programmatic SEO worked splendidly for companies like Zapier and Tripadvisor before thousands of businesses filled the web with thin, templated pages.
Parasite SEO (publishing on high-authority third-party websites to rank quickly) had a strong run in 2023 and 2024 before Google began targeting reputation abuse more aggressively.
Almost all promotional activity has a shelf life, especially when it comes to organic, because it is free. People love getting free eyeballs on their business, and so organic will always be the most gamed.
The takeaway from this is that as a marketer or business owner, you ultimately have two strategies open to you:
Constant short-termism: spotting trends early and moving on when they decay. Faster growth, but unsustainable by definition, and more stress.
Long-term fundamental stacking: creating a business with a strong product, clear positioning, direct customer relationships, and useful, owned content. Slower, but more resilient and less stressful.
There is a third strategy, obviously, which is both. As long as you have the budget.
By all means use the short-term tactics. Try the new channel. Ride the wave. Just don’t kid yourself about what you’re doing: you’re playing whack-a-mole with other companies’ algorithms that can, and will, change suddenly.