How Reddit affects contractors’ online visibility

Reddit has become an important factor in online search, and therefore important to any contractor’s visibility — although exactly how important is a matter of debate. 

What’s happening: Over the past few years, Google has made a series of technical changes that increasingly put Reddit’s human-generated content at the top of its search results.  

• But as consumers gravitate toward AI search tools, including ChatGPT, and as those tools adjust how heavily they rely on Reddit’s content, the site’s importance may fluctuate. 

Catch up quick: In February 2024, in a deal reportedly worth $60 million, Google announced it would leverage Reddit’s content to train its AI and display more of that content in its products. (One study found that between July 2023 and April 2024, Google SEO visibility for Reddit’s website grew over 1,300 percent.)

• Reddit cut a similar deal with OpenAI in May 2024, and this September, Bloomberg reported that the company was in early talks with Google about yet another content-sharing agreement.

Zoom in: On Google, search results differ depending on how a consumer phrases their query. 

• A May 2024 analysis, which included tests for HVAC, found that when consumers made informational searches — “best HVAC contractor” — a Reddit link surfaced 100 percent of the time. 
• Meanwhile, for transactional queries — “HVAC contractor” — Reddit appeared 20 percent of the time. 

Yes, but: A recent search study downplayed Reddit’s importance, noting that it’s less influential on displaying results across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s Gemini, as Homepros reported. 

• “Reddit and similar platforms accounted for just 2% of citations once location context and query intent were applied,” the study found. 
• This September, there was a sudden drop in Reddit citations on ChatGPT, from 14 percent of all responses to about two percent, attributed to a Google change. 

The big picture: In any case, “Reddit is now the second most visited website in the U.S., and the third most visited in Canada,” Social Media Today reported. 

• The site boasts about 110 million daily active users, up 21 percent year-over-year, according to the company’s latest earnings call.

What they’re saying: Mitchell Demitruk owns North Carolina-based Super Cool HVAC, a company with 15 employees and about $4 million in annual revenue that’s frequently recommended in Charlotte’s subreddit. 

• “I have been riding with Mitchell and Supercool for awhile now and they have provided me top notch service every time!” one such comment says. 
• Demitruk doesn’t track leads from the site, but visits it regularly as a user, and believes it plays into his business, which is almost entirely word of mouth, he tells Homepros. 
• He recently Googled a competitor, and the top search result was a Reddit page with a commenter advising, “‘You need to talk to Super Cool before you pull the trigger with [two other local companies],’” he adds. 

That said: Reddit can be a double-edged sword, with customers also discussing bad experiences, as a Phoenix subreddit shows. 

What we’re watching: Despite the data, customers have been finding Super Cool via ChatGPT, Demitruk says. “I didn’t know people were using that to look for contractors.”