People are finally using Reddit’s search

Reddit, which has been plagued by complaints that its search function needs improvement, has invested in its search engine over the past few years and has also added AI features to help users find what they’re looking for. It looks like the investment is finally paying off. CEO Steve Huffman said Thursday that the company has seen a 30% year-over-year increase in the number of people using search each week.

Huffman noted that search is one of the main drivers of user acquisition and retention on the platform.

“We’ve seen great performance in search. Search DAU, WAU, and queries are up meaningfully year-over-year, which is a great driver of retention and DAU. Quite frankly, I think our search team is doing a great job. With Reddit Answers, you’re seeing search become better integrated into the product,” he said on a conference call after the company’s first-quarter results.

In early February, the platform began testing product placement through AI search results in the United States.

Huffman said about 40% of conversations on Reddit are commercial in nature, and 84% of shoppers say they feel more confident in their purchasing decisions after researching on Reddit.

The social platform ended the quarter with more than 493 million weekly active unique users (WAUq), up 23% from the same period last year, and approximately 126 million daily active unique users (DAUq), up 17% from the same period last year.

Reddit reported a 7% increase in US visitors, reaching 53.5 million DAUq, and a 26% increase internationally, reaching 73.3 million DAUq. The company said it plans to reach 1 billion daily users globally and 100 million daily users in the United States.

In addition to search, the company said its machine translation feature, which now supports more than 30 languages, has driven significant user growth over the past few quarters.

Reddit reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $663 million, beating Wall Street’s expectations of $609.8 million. The company also said it spent only $1 million in capital expenditures in the quarter.