Reddit's Q2 revenue rose 61% to $804.9 million but its stock fell as much as 23% after the CEO warned Google's AI Overviews were choking search referrals. It is a market-priced signal that the content-for-traffic deal is breaking, and a warning for any Australian business reliant on Google organic.
The Take: Reddit is one of the most-quoted sources inside Google's AI answers, and it just told investors those answers are not sending readers back. If the most-cited site on the internet cannot rely on Google clicks, the business quietly depending on organic traffic should assume the same and start measuring where its visibility actually goes.
The signal: Reddit's second-quarter revenue rose 61% to $804.9 million and beat estimates, yet the stock fell as much as 23% after chief executive Steve Huffman warned that search referrals were "choppy". His framing was direct: the "10 blue links" drove enormous value for the whole web and AI Overviews have not replaced it.
Between the lines: Google can now read a page, write the answer and keep the click. The old trade, content in exchange for traffic, is being rewritten without the publishers in the room. Reddit at least has a licensing deal and an app to fall back on. A plumber, a law firm or a local retailer ranking for its own category has neither. This is the same slow erosion of click-through that has run across categories for two years, only now it has surfaced in a listed company's earnings call, which is why the market reacted the way it did.
Who pays: Australian businesses that ranked their way to leads. Even as the local ad market grew to roughly $28 billion in 2025, the free channel underneath it is thinning. In our benchmarking of the Australian market, most businesses lean heavily on Google organic and few can tell you how much of that visibility now ends inside an AI answer rather than a visit.
Reddit's quarterly revenue, up 61%, and the market still sold it off over lost search clicks
For Australian operators: Split your analytics so AI-referred sessions are visible, not buried in direct or organic. Track impressions and clicks together in Search Console, because a rising impression count with flat clicks is the AI Overview taking your answer. Build the demand you own alongside the traffic you rent, through email, referral and a brand people search for by name, so a single Google change lands as a dent rather than a crisis. If you cannot see where your organic went, Hub is built to show you.