Since the news of Google and Reddit’s partnership was announced in February, many SEOs have been curious about the impact it has on the SERPs.
Well, it’s been hard not to notice – Reddit and Quora, among other discussion forums, have become increasingly prominent in SERPs, affecting visibility for a broad range of industries.
Our analysis of 1.4 million keywords shows that 33% now trigger the Discussions & Forums feature, peaking at 38% in December 2023.
But not all industries are impacted the same.
To better understand how this SERP feature affects your site’s visibility, we’ve researched how often it appears for various different industries. Uncover the results and their significance for your digital strategy below!
Before we dive into the data, let’s unpack what Google’s partnership with Reddit means for SEO.
It seems safe to say Reddit's sudden preeminence in the SERPs isn't a temporary fling.
With the increasing presence of the Discussions and Forums SERP feature over the past several months, it seems Google has been priming its results for this partnership for a while now.
Just look at how much the prevalence of the SERP feature has skyrocketed since October of 2023 with the blue line representing Reddit’s share of the SERP feature.
For reference, here’s Quora’s share:
So what does this partnership entail?
Reddit gains access to Google's Cloud and Vertex AI technologies, allowing them to integrate new AI-driven features on their platform.
Google, on the other hand, secures access to Reddit's data API for real time, structured, unique data. This access is poised to enhance Google's understanding and algorithm training on Reddit, making the platform’s content even more accessible across Google's products.
We're closely monitoring how Google leverages this new access and the subsequent ripple effects on SERP dynamics.
As you can see, the Discussions and Forums SERP feature has had a massive impact on the SERP, but its prevalence varies depending on the industry.
Using seoClarity's platform, we’ve researched the impact of this SERP feature by industry to give you a more accurate prediction of how your site’s visibility is affected.
From a sampling of ~161,000 apparel-related keywords, 21% triggered a Discussions and Forums SERP result.
The automotive industry appears to be substantially impacted by the Discussions and Forums feature.
In a pool of ~255,000 keywords related to the automotive industry, the feature appeared for a whopping 41%.
Out of our sample of ~190,000 finance-related keywords, 23% pulled a Discussion and Forums SERP feature.
Similar to the automotive industry, the ecommerce industry is also heavily impacted with the SERP feature appearing for 32% of our sampling ~106,000 ecommerce keywords.
At just 7.2 percent out of 635,000 keywords, the Discussions and Forums SERP feature appears the least frequently for Travel out of all the industries we researched.
Now that you have an idea on how the Discussions and Forums feature impacts the SERP your industry, the next question is, “what can you do about it?”
We have a few suggestions.
For one, we’d urge any SEO concerned about the discussions and forums results to closely monitor their search visibility.
An easy way to do this is by using Visibility Share in seoClarity, which measures actual pixel depth (not just rank position) to help you understand your percent of visibility in the search results for any keyword or domain.
If your search visibility is decreasing, it’s important to prioritize opportunities for ranking above the fold such as enhancing your content to improve relevancy and authority for the queries.
Recommended Reading: Top SEO Content Writing Tips
It may also be possible to gain visibility in this SERP feature by getting more mentions in discussion forums. However, since many forums flag and delete posts that appear blatantly promotional or directly from a brand, it’s important to proceed with caution.
Many discussion forum users have already started to voice their concerns about how brands have been filling discussion forums with promotional content – particularly for product reviews – due to the increased search traffic Google has provided these sites.
An alternative option is to create user forums on your own site.
If this makes sense for your site and isn’t JUST for Google SERP, it might be a strategy to consider.
Keep in mind that you can add schema/structured data to your discussion and forum pages, so it's not just reddit.com and quora.com that can be in this SERP feature. By doing so and encouraging customer engagement, your site also has a chance.
Ultimately, our advice to SEOs is consistent with the advice we always recommend when a significant SERP change occurs – optimize your site for users not search engines.
Remember the fleeting prominence of FAQ schema? Google's experimentation and evolution will continue and chasing after each SERP change is a recipe for frustration.
So watch the Discussions and Forums feature and monitor it, but ultimately stay focused on implementing SEO strategies that provide the best possible user experience.
We hope our industry-specific research on the prevalence of the Discussion and Forums SERP feature helps you better understand how this increasingly prominent result could impact your site’s visibility.
For more specific information on how often the feature shows up for your target keywords, use seoClarity’s SERP Features capability and simply filter by “Discussions and Forums.”
