Reddit Answers: How Reddit Built AI Search

Finding information on Reddit is hard. Millions of posts and comments mean lots of noise mixed with the good stuff. Reddit's built-in search has always been pretty bad, so people resort to adding "reddit" to their Google searches.

Reddit Answers is their attempt to fix this with AI. It's basically a natural language interface over Reddit's content - you ask a question, it searches Reddit's discussions, summarizes the best answers, and links to the original threads.

For example, ask "How do I grow herbs indoors?" and it will pull together advice from r/gardening and r/IndoorGarden, summarize the key points, and link you to the actual discussions.

How It Works

The system is pretty straightforward. You type a question in natural language - no special syntax needed. The AI searches Reddit's posts and comments, ranks them by relevance and quality (looking at upvotes, comment depth, community reputation), then generates a summary from multiple sources. Each fact in the summary links back to the original discussion so you can dig deeper if you want.

It also surfaces related subreddits you might want to check out.

Right now it's in beta for US users on desktop and iOS. You can join the waitlist if you don't have access yet.

Why This Matters

Reddit is competing with Google and ChatGPT here. People already search "best headphones reddit" in Google because they trust Reddit's community knowledge more than generic review sites. ChatGPT and other AI tools are also pulling from Reddit to answer questions.

Reddit wants to keep people on their platform instead of losing them to external search engines and AI tools. If people can get good answers directly on Reddit, they stick around longer.

The tool has some clear advantages - fast AI summaries of the best insights, easy discovery of relevant communities, no need to wade through spam and low-quality comments.

The downsides are typical for a beta: it's buggy sometimes, only available in the US right now, limited to English, and missing features like sharing.

What's Next

Reddit plans to expand this globally, add more languages, and refine the features. If it works well, it could change how people use Reddit - making it easier to get quick answers while still having the option to dive into full discussions.

Why This Matters for Business

For people building products or doing marketing, Reddit Answers is interesting because it makes Reddit's knowledge more accessible. You can quickly see what people are saying about topics, products, or problems in your space.

Combined with tools like ThreadScout that monitor Reddit in real-time, you can track trends, see how people talk about your product category, and find conversations where you can actually help people.

Bottom Line

Reddit Answers is Reddit's move to compete in the AI search space. It makes Reddit more useful by helping you find good information faster. As they expand and improve it, this could become a core part of how people use Reddit.

Worth watching if you care about how information discovery is evolving on the internet.