Reddit's stock dropped more than 20% last week. Not because they missed. The...

AISEOBusinessStrategyAEO

Reddit's stock dropped more than 20% last week. Not because they missed. They beat expectations on almost everything. It dropped over one word from the earnings call: referrals.

The CEO spent the call questioning whether Google's AI Overviews do anything for the businesses feeding them. His words: "As businesses, publishers, retailers, we're still looking for that win-win." (When the company that sells its data to train AI is nervous about what AI does to its traffic, pay attention.)

Here's the number that matters if customers find you through Google. Pew clocked click-throughs at 8% when an AI Overview shows up, versus 15% when it doesn't. Call it half your clicks: not lost to a competitor, just... not happening. Google says Pew's math is flawed and traffic is "stable." Maybe. But publishers pulling out of Google deals tells you who actually believes that. And the sites getting hit hardest are the small ones, which is most of us.

The takeaway isn't "panic about SEO." It's that the job split in two:

  1. Be the source the AI cites. Google your own business the way a customer would. Read the AI answer out loud. Write down anything wrong or missing, then fix it at the source it's pulling from (your site, your listings, your reviews). The AI inherits whatever's on those pages, and it won't tell you what it said about you.

  2. Be the thing a summary can't replace. Publish the stuff an AI can't manufacture: the specific customer story, the real before-and-after, the opinion you'll actually defend. As Huffman put it: "people don't want a summary of Reddit; they want Reddit."

Your website isn't going away. Its job is moving, from where the sale happens to the checkable, first-hand thing every AI answer (and every agent) verifies before it recommends you.

The businesses adapting fastest already stopped assuming the search box tells their customers the truth about them. Have you checked what yours says lately? I do this for clients (takes an afternoon, and it's usually a wake-up call).