This week, a blog post entitled “Google Search Is Dying” went viral, detailing how the search results have deteriorated because of the proliferation of advertisements and SEO sites.

Here’s an excerpt from DKB:

If you’ve tried to search for a recipe or product review recently, I don’t need to tell you that Google search results have gone to s—t. You would have already noticed that the first few non-ad results are SEO-optimized sites filled with affiliate links and ads.

Google still gives decent results for many other categories, especially when it comes to factual information. You might think that Google results are pretty good for you, and you have no idea what I’m talking about.

What you don’t realize is that you’ve been self-censoring yourself from searching most of the things you would have wanted to search. You already know subconsciously that Google isn’t going to return a good result.

Why is Reddit a popular search and social platform?

DKB asserts that Reddit is now the most popular search engine. And this claim is not unfounded. Reddit has become one of the most prominent social platforms, a rare place on the internet where you can find an answer to any problem you have, like my recent one: “Dog won't stop trying to eat grass and completely tunes me out” and get answers to that same question “dogs eat grass when they feel sick or have upset stomachs”. As pointed out by Paul Graham, Reddit has grown into a social platform of sorts that has not yet reached its peak.

But Reddit goes beyond being just a Q&A search-social-platform; it’s a place where communities congregate, it’s a news aggregator for 7 out of 10 Reddit users*, and it’s a place from which MIT and Harvard derived their research on mental health** recently. Sources( *pew research center, **websitebuilder)

But... searching Reddit is kind of hard, unnecessarily hard.

Why is searching Reddit so hard?

For all the great things that Reddit offers, Reddit users often complain that they are having a hard time finding what they are looking for using the site’s search functionality.

‘Reddit search not working’ is a popular SERP query that looks like this:

That query above has an average daily search volume of 1.4K, and when combined with related keyword searches such as ‘reddit search broken’, ‘reddit won’t search’, etc., it has amounted to roughly 8.6M total volume of searches on that topic as of January 29, 2022 (source semrush.com keyword volume analysis).

But perhaps even more importantly, it frustrates Reddit users, who take to the platform and leave comments like these:

So how do people actually search Reddit?

People search Reddit using 'site:Reddit.com'

As DKB notes, since Reddit’s search functionality isn’t up to par, more people have resorted to appending “site:reddit.com” to Google and bypass the ads and SEO to get straight to real people's comments on Reddit. It might sound counter-intuitive, but it works, well kind of.

Although somewhat effective in finding relevant results, the process itself is time-consuming. You are often met with a long line of links to go through and a very little preview of the results to help you determine if you should or shouldn’t click on a specific result to read it further.

How To Search Reddit effectively using you.com

Good news - Google is not the only search engine out there, despite its efforts to monopolize the market. A search engine like you.com automatically integrates Reddit into its results, giving instant access to Reddit on every query without having to append “site:reddit.com” each time.

On you.com, you can even set your source preferences. The search engine will always surface relevant results, but it prioritizes those results based on your preferences such as Reddit. With an account, you can set that preference with a thumbs up. If you want to see less of something, give it a thumbs down, and if you’re indifferent, there is no need to do anything. What’s also unique about it is that it gives you a preview of each Reddit post so you can quickly scan and see if it’s in line with what you are looking for. Swiping left and right takes you to more similar content while swiping up and down lets you see different types of results and different sources of content – all in the same tab, saving you time.

This video walks you through the platform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR9sNOMB6yI

It’s also important to mention that you.com search results don’t include ads and wonky SEO content. Unlike standard search engines, you.com doesn’t sell users’ private data to advertisers in personal or private mode. And in the private mode, nothing is stored, making it more private than any other search engine out there.

A better search engine means...faster results

So next time you want to search Reddit like a detective, skip the traditional search engines and go straight to You.com to find what you are looking for. Spend less time searching, and find more of what you want. You’ll quickly find why Reddit is so loved by YOUsers and why it’s one of the most used search apps on you.com right now.

Try it out at you.com, and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Also Published Here