Google Poisons The Well While Reddit Builds A Wall
Google Is Poisoning the Well And Your Data Is Drinking From It
Fake results aimed at scrapers are corrupting third-party tools, and possibly your own Search Console.
What's the News:
Google has been serving deliberately fake search results to automated scrapers, in what appears to be an effort to protect itself from competing LLMs and visibility-tracking tools. The poisoned pages look completely normal, but the results on them have been swapped out. These fake results might even be reaching real Google users.
Why It Matters:
Third-party data is compromised: Ahrefs reports that between 5% and 20% of the search results it receives are poisoned, depending on the data provider. That undermines the reliability of visibility platforms like Ahrefs and Semrush.
The workaround creates a new problem: Instead of checking a keyword or prompt once, these platforms now repeatedly search the same thing until they get nearly identical or matching sets of results. Rather than stopping scrapers, Google is now getting scraped several times over. A keyword once checked daily might now be checked three times.
Your first-party data is inflated, too: Those duplicate queries register as impressions in Google Search Console, making search demand look higher than it is and dragging down CTR. Since poisoning ramped up in mid-September, GSC impression and CTR data has become far less reliable.
These types of battles are likely to continue, and you’ll keep having a tough time trusting any one source of data. Your measurement playbook needs to bring multiple sources together.
Marketers Should:
Diversify your measurement playbook. Pull from a variety of sources, not one tool or one dashboard.
Measure the right metrics at each stage. Track different signals at different points of the consumer journey, then bring them together into a single view.
Validate before you react. Use multiple sources and metrics to confirm a change before acting on it, so you can pinpoint what’s actually driving organic growth.
Treat recent GSC trends with caution. A drop in CTR since mid-September may be inflated impressions, not weak titles or meta descriptions.
Reddit Wants the Whole Discovery Journey on Its Turf.
Logged-in users and search ads move Reddit closer to the point of consideration.
What's the News:
Reddit reported Q3 revenue up 53% year over year to $895M, driven largely by advertising, which grew 54% to $847M.
But audience growth was less clean. U.S. daily active uniques declined 2%, while U.S. logged-out daily users fell 4%. Reddit also reported weakening search referral traffic.
At the same time, Reddit plans to test a primarily logged-in experience in select markets outside the U.S. and is testing ads directly within Reddit search results. That gives Reddit more control over both the user relationship and the high-intent searches happening on its platform.
Why It Matters:
Logged-out traffic is valuable, but hard to monetize: Reddit has historically benefited from people landing on conversations through Google without ever logging in. Logged-out users still made up roughly 59% of Reddit’s global daily uniques last quarter (76.8M of 130.3M), and that traffic is harder to understand and monetize.
Logins and search ads close the gap: A logged-in experience gives Reddit stronger first-party signals. Search ads give it a new way to monetize users actively researching products, problems, and recommendations.
The strategy is getting clearer: Put the two together and Reddit wants more of the discovery journey to happen inside an environment it controls.
People come to Reddit for candid opinions, comparisons, recommendations, and answers to specific questions. That creates valuable intent. If Reddit can move more of those users into logged-in experiences and monetize search at the same time, it creates an ad product closer to the point of consideration, and a much more interesting option for brands looking for intent outside Google.
Marketers Should:
Watch Reddit search ads closely. The combination of community context and active search intent could create a differentiated performance opportunity.
Pay attention to logged-in growth. More authenticated users could improve targeting, measurement, and advertiser value over time.
Use Reddit-native messaging. Generic ad copy will struggle on a platform built around candid discussion and peer recommendations.
Measure incrementality. As Reddit gets better at capturing high-intent users, make sure it’s creating new demand rather than taking credit for demand that already exists.
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