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Reddit Shares Plunge 30% as Google Traffic Slows

By Drooid · Oct 31, 2026 · How we work

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Summary

Reddit Inc. shares fell 30% after the company warned that Google search traffic is decreasing.
The warning extended Reddit’s year-to-date decline to 60%.
Daily active uniques reached 130.3 million, while U.S. users dropped 2% to 50.7 million.
Reddit forecast Q4 revenue of $1 billion-$1.03 billion, below the $1.05 billion analyst consensus.
Reddit will test requiring most users to log in to view content, starting outside the U.S. in Q4.

History

Google’s Panda update, first rolled out in February 2011 to demote low-quality sites and affecting roughly 12 % of search results, continued with a May 2014 Panda 4.0 that hit content aggregators. The January 2014 rollout cut Reddit’s Google-referral traffic by about 30 %, echoing earlier drops for Yahoo and Facebook and underscoring how algorithm shifts can destabilize platform revenues.

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Google’s Panda update, first rolled out in February 2011 to demote low-quality sites and affecting roughly 12 % of search results, continued with a May 2014 Panda 4.0 that hit content aggregators. The January 2014 rollout cut Reddit’s Google-referral traffic by about 30 %, echoing earlier drops for Yahoo and Facebook and underscoring how algorithm shifts can destabilize platform revenues.

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