Three Reasons You Shouldn’t Depend on Reddit As a Search Engine

It's one of those tech hacks that's been around a long time: Add "reddit" to the end of your Google search queries, the theory goes, and you'll get some actually useful information from real people, rather than SEO-optimized spam sites looking for your clicks. It's a trick that works, a lot of the time, depending on what you're looking for.

Now Reddit is starting to push its credentials as a search engine, making use of the "breadth of conversations and knowledge" on the platform to position itself as a genuine alternative to Google. We already have Reddit Answers, which lets you type in a query and get the opinions of Reddit back in summarized form, and there's apparently more to come.

But while the Reddit tweak may be handy for some Google searches, is it a substitute for Google? I'd argue that while there's undoubtedly a wealth of useful information on Reddit, and a lot of value in the platform as a whole, it's not the best idea to use it as a default search engine.

There's no guarantee of expertise

Reddit will give you information on almost everything. Credit: Lifehacker

Maybe you're heading to Reddit to find out how to fix a broken keyboard. For queries like this, you'll come across a pile of relevant posts. However, quantity doesn't necessarily mean quality, and there's no guarantee that what you're reading can be trusted.

Yes, you have the upvote and downvote system, which is helpful in assessing the quality of comments, and the associated karma system. Nevertheless, even with these signals, it doesn't necessarily mean you can always rely on the instructions, advice, and takes that appear on Reddit. For much of the time you're going to be putting your trust in someone you don't know anything about.

Add in the AI slop that is appearing on Reddit (as well as everywhere else on the internet), and it's not always easy to pick out the good stuff from the bad stuff. Compare and contrast these with articles that take you through topics step-by-step, written by authors with real names and photos attached, and put together with proper editorial oversight, and it's not hard to see where Reddit comes up short.

Reddit is limited to Redditors

There are plenty of opinions outside of Reddit. Credit: Lifehacker

No offense to the good people of Reddit, but they only represent a subsection of humanity—a rather significant subsection, admittedly, with around 110 million people checking the site every day, but still only a fraction of the people who are connected to the web and who might be able to help you with your search queries.

Limit your searches to Reddit, and you're limiting yourself to posts from Redditors who are actually active in terms of contributions, and who have actually noticed the threads you're checking. What if the Redditors who know most about attracting birds to your garden have ignored or missed the conversation about attracting birds to your garden?

In terms of the stats, Reddit users tend to be younger, male, and from the U.S., and that means there are going to be certain biases in terms of the posts than come up when you search the platform. It's not quite like searching the web at large, which has certain biases of its own, but is open to everyone.

Don't discount all the information and advice you can get from everyone who has never logged into Reddit—whether you're looking for travel guides from locals or wondering in which order to watch Bond films.

You've got better options

AI search can be helpful—within limits. Credit: Lifehacker

Google is far from perfect, but it can still surface useful and informative resources a lot of the time—especially if you know some of the secrets to using it as effectively as possible. Remember you can use the "site:" operator to limit results to one domain, add a "+" (plus) in front of words that must be matched, and a "-" (minus) next to words that should be excluded from results (which can help filter out some of the rubbish).

There's also the advanced search page on Google, which lets you limit results by language, region, or time (helping you avoid out-of-date information). The best approach is going to vary depending on what it is you're searching for, but Google still offers the most comprehensive and powerful search out there.

Another good idea is to seek out and follow sources you trust, whether that's on the web, on social media, or on platforms like YouTube. Over time, you should be able to figure out who you should be giving your attention to—and again these sources of information should be more reliable than random Reddit accounts.

However you do your searching, do it with a bit of caution and common sense. That obviously applies to AI searches, too: They're susceptible to hallucinations, and you need to double-check the websites they're pulling their knowledge from, but the way these AI tools are able to aggregate and present information from multiple sources can come in handy in certain search scenarios.