Your Reddit-to-AI Search Visibility Playbook

Reddit is the #1 cited source on Perplexity and a top citation source for ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. Your website is your resume. Reddit is the reference check. And right now, AI is 6.5x more likely to cite a Reddit post than your own product page.

In this webinar, Samanyou Garg (Founder and CEO, Writesonic) and Leigha Henderson (Reddit Marketer, Scalers) share the exact playbook for leveraging Reddit to get cited by AI search platforms.

Transcript

1. 1 Why AI Trusts UGC More Than Your Website And What to Do About It Samanyou Garg Founder/CEO at Writesonic Leigha Henderson Senior Reddit Marketing Specialist at Scalerrs
2. 2 $203M in AI data licensing contracts with Reddit Source: Columbia Journalism Review, Reddit IPO filing, Q4 2025 earnings
3. 3 The AI Search Landscape: What Changed What Still Works What's NEW (2026) Your website is your foundation Communities are now your amplifier Owned content builds brand authority Third-party mentions build AI trust SEO drives search traffic GEO drives AI citation traffic Technical SEO + structured data UGC engagement + community signals Your content ranks on Google Reddit threads get cited by ChatGPT Owned content is still essential. But it's no longer enough.
4. 4 The Two-Step Model: How AI Actually Picks You Step 1: Discovery "Best CRM for startups?" Third-party sources get your brand INTO the conversation Reddit, YouTube, G2, Quora → Step 2: Conversion "Tell me about [Your Brand]" Your owned domain is the #1 cited source 87% of the time 87% Source: Algomizer (169K prompts analyzed), Yext (6.8M citations)
5. 5 AI Platforms Aren't Citing Your Website 82-89% of AI citations = third- party sources Wikipedia. Reddit. YouTube. G2. Quora. Not your blog. Not your landing pages. Not your product pages. 85% 15% Third-Party Brand-Owned Source: University of Toronto research via Authority Tech
6. 6 AI Traffic = Higher Quality Visitors Microsoft Clarity analyzed 1,200+ sites: Signups: 1.66% (AI) vs 0.15% (search) = 11x better Subscriptions: 1.34% (AI) vs 0.55% (search) = 3x better Source: Microsoft Clarity study (Nov 2025, 1,200+ sites) Signups AI: 1.66% Search: 0.15% Subscriptions AI: 1.34% Search: 0.55%
7. 7 Your SEO team: "We optimized everything. Perfect schema. Perfect meta tags. Comprehensive guides. Flawless technical SEO." ChatGPT: "According to u/TechDude42069 on r/sysadmin..."
8. 8 Reddit Is the #1 Cited Source on Perplexity (48%) Nearly half of all Perplexity citations. Reddit. Not competitor sites. Not news sites. Reddit. Perplexity 48% Google AIO 22.9% ChatGPT 22.5%
9. 9 Social Citations Grew 4x in Just 90 Days September: Steady October: Reddit and YouTube citations surge November: 4x growth 1x Sep 2.2x Oct 4x Nov
10. 11 All AI Platforms Use the Same Pipeline 1 Index the Web Crawl & index billions of web pages → 2 Retrieve (RAG) Find relevant sources for each query → 3 Synthesize & Cite LLM generates answer with source links ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI — same fundamentals, different indexes
11. 12 Reddit > Your Blogs & Landing Pages For B2B discovery queries, Reddit has stronger influence on AI citations than your blogs, landing pages, and product pages. 88% of Reddit citations = category-level queries "What's the best CRM for startups?" 6.5x more likely to earn AI visibility with third-party presence
12. 13 Reddit: 80M Weekly Search Users (Up 30%) 80M weekly search users 15M Reddit Answers users $141M data licensing (2025) "Our corpus is really big, really distinctive, and really essential." — Steve Huffman, Reddit CEO Source: Reddit Q4 2025 earnings, SEC filings
13. 14 The 5-3-2-1 Reddit Formula 5 subreddits to monitor 3 valuable posts weekly 2 helpful comments daily 1 AMA quarterly
14. 15 Not All Subreddits Are Equal Qualification criteria: 1. Target audience active there? (High/Medium/Low) 2. 10+ posts daily (activity check) 3. 50K+ members (scale) 4. High comment-to-post ratio (engagement) 5. Active mods + clear rules (quality) 6. Competing tools discussed? (relevance) Score 5-6: Priority 1 → Start here
15. 16 The Minimum Viable Strategy Pick 1 subreddit (your most relevant) Leave 2 helpful comments daily Do this for 30 days straight Time: 15 min/day Result: Community reputation + AI citations
16. 17 Don't Promote. Help. Don't Do "Check out our product" "We migrated 50 DBs to Aurora — here's what broke" Post links without context "Here's our internal CRM eval template [link]" Spam promotional content "We built X for this use case — happy to answer Qs"
17. 18 YouTube: Long-Form + Rich Metadata 10-20 min videos Long-form explainers Detailed titles, descriptions Keyword-rich context Timestamps Chapter markers for AI Accurate transcripts Machine-readable text
18. 19 The Measurement Framework Input Posts, comments, engagement time Engagement Upvotes, replies, thread depth Output AI citations, mentions, visibility Outcome Traffic, conversions, revenue
19. 20 Source: Perplexity-Reddit lawsuit impact research Don't Build Everything on One Platform What happened when Reddit sued Perplexity: Cease & Desist 40X citation spike → Lawsuit Filed -86% citations overnight The lesson: spread across platforms Reddit YouTube LinkedIn G2 / Quora Wikipedia
20. 21 The 90-Day Plan Week 1 Find 5 subreddits Set up tracking Weeks 2-4 Daily comments Weekly posts Weeks 5-8 Expand subreddits Track AI citations Month 3 Host AMA Double down Source: 90-day implementation framework
21. 22 That's the Data. Now Let's See It in Action. Up next: Leigha Henderson Real Reddit strategies. Real walkthroughs. Real results.