Anything Engine Optimization The rolling record of the AI-search industry.

The record

Reddit

What is Reddit?

The most-cited forum on the AI surfaces and the loudest litigant against scrapers — the clearest test of whether being quoted by an engine is worth anything.

Reddit is the case study for the whole citation economy, and the record pulls in two directions at once. Ahrefs put it second by mention share in Google AI Overviews at 18.5%, behind YouTube; BrightEdge measured its tracked search footprint up 33x between June 2025 and February 2026, then another 84% to July before plateauing at a level several times higher than a year earlier, with roughly 88% of that volume coming from AI Overviews. Days later a tracker recorded Reddit's ChatGPT Search citations falling 86% in four days — a reminder that citation share is engine-specific and moves without warning. Meanwhile Reddit is suing: its DMCA anti-circumvention claims against Perplexity and SerpApi survived a dismissal bid in the Southern District of New York, and its CEO says AI Overviews still have not found a win-win. Google, for its part, denies giving Reddit any special preference in rankings.

11 items on the wire, newest first. Elsewhere: official · Wikipedia · Wikidata