Over the past few years, Reddit has invested in its search engine and added AI features to help users find what they’re looking for, as the company has been plagued by complaints that its search functionality needs improvement. It looks like the investment is finally paying off. The company has seen a 30% increase in the number of people using search each week compared to a year ago, CEO Steve Huffman said Thursday.
Huffman noted that search is one of the platform’s key drivers of user acquisition and retention.
“When it comes to search, we’ve seen great performance. Search DAU, WAU, and queries are up significantly year-over-year. That’s a big driver of retention and DAU. Frankly, I think our search team is doing a great job. With Reddit Answers, we’re seeing Reddit Answers being better integrated into the product,” he said on the company’s post-Q1 earnings conference call.
In early February, the platform began testing product placement through AI search results in the US.
According to Huffman, about 40% of conversations on Reddit are commercial in nature, and 84% of shoppers feel more confident in their purchasing decisions after researching on Reddit.
The social platform ended the quarter with more than 493 million weekly active unique users (WAUq), up 23% year-over-year, and approximately 126 million daily active unique users (DAUq), up 17% year-over-year.
Reddit reported a 7% improvement in US visitors to 53.5 million DAUq, and a 26% increase internationally to 73.3 million DAUq. The company said it plans to reach 1 billion daily users worldwide and 100 million daily users in the United States.
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In addition to search, the company said its machine translation feature, which currently supports more than 30 languages, has driven significant user growth over the past few quarters.
Reddit reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $663 million, beating Wall Street expectations of $609.8 million. The company also said it spent only $1 million in capital expenditures during the quarter.
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