ChatGPT suddenly stops citing Reddit as social media citations plunge 86% in four days

ChatGPT suddenly stops citing Reddit as much

Reddit, once a favorite source of information for AI chatbots, is now barely being cited by ChatGPT, according to a new report from an AI search and analytics company. Published this week by PromptWatch, the report found that Reddit citations in ChatGPT Search fell more than 86 percent over a recent four-day period. PromptWatch data shows that Reddit held an average share of 3.83 percent of ChatGPT citations. This made Reddit one of ChatGPT's most cited domains from across the web. However, within one day, that quickly changed. PromptWatch noticed that starting on Aug. 14, Reddit's citation share plunged to less than 1 percent. Between Aug. 14 and 17, Reddit's ChatGPT citation share fell even lower, to an average of 0.52 percent, or an 86.4 percent decline. This is a stunning and sudden drop in ChatGPT citations for Reddit. So, what happened? As of now, exactly why Reddit fell out of favor with ChatGPT is unclear. The drastic decline in Reddit citations is unique to ChatGPT, according to PrompWatch's report, although there were slight decreases in Reddit citations in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode during the same timeframe. Search Engine Journal reports that ChatGPT changed its search process on Aug. 8, but that this wouldn't explain the massive drop days later on Aug. 14. As the outlet explains, a similar drop has occurred before, and neither ChatGPT creator OpenAI nor Reddit was responsible. In September of last year, Reddit citations on ChatGPT also declined. It turned out that that citation plunge was due to a search parameter change that Google had made, and which many tools, including ChatGPT, relied on. Reddit has long had a complicated relationship with AI and scraping bots. Generation engine optimization, or GEO, is a new branch of search engine optimization (SEO) that optimizes websites specifically for AI. As a result of AI's rising popularity, Reddit has dealt with a significant uptick in spam and other promotional GEO tactics from users and agencies looking to get their websites and clients mentioned by AI chatbots. With that said, Reddit has also benefited from the AI boom as well. The company signed a lucrative deal with OpenAI a few years ago, which allowed the AI company to train its LLMs using Reddit user content. When news broke last month that Reddit may not renew a similar AI licensing deal with Google, Reddit stock took a dive. While it's possible that either Reddit or OpenAI made a purposeful decision that resulted in the citation decline, don't be surprised if ChatGPT soon reverts to regularly sourcing Reddit again either.

ChatGPT Suddenly Cut Reddit Citations by 81 Percent, a New Report Found. Review Sites Gained Ground

Thanks to millions of users who post and engage in real-time discussions on a daily basis, Reddit is one of the internet's largest repositories of text. This makes it extremely valuable to AI bots to generate responses and provide summaries -- particularly ChatGPT. In the past, the OpenAI model has been known to frequently cite Reddit. Now, some people have reported a sudden decline in ChatGPT's Reddit citations over the last week. "Around August 14, ChatGPT started citing Reddit about 80% less than it was before," Petra Labs co-founder Sami Akkawi wrote on LinkedIn two days ago. Is ChatGPT citing Reddit less? That's not all. Based on the analysis by Petra Labs, while Reddit citations showed a significant dip, all social media citations -- including YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin and TikTok -- have seemingly taken a hit. This seemed to occur on the same day. "Reddit actually did not even experience the largest percentage decrease," he told Inc. LinkedIn and Facebook showed the smallest decline at 36 and 28 percent, respectively. That's compared to TikTok at 72 percent, Reddit at 81 percent, and Youtube at 88 percent. "While all social channels saw declines, most of them were operating on a way smaller base of citations than Reddit was (an order of magnitude or two smaller), which is why Reddit saw the largest absolute magnitude decrease," he added.