> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://decageo.ai/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Reddit Was in the Search Results of ChatGPT Answers We Track. None Cited It.
> Judge Reddit work by recommendations, not citation share. Reddit was in the search results of 31.5% of DecaGEO's ChatGPT software answers. None cited it.
**In DecaGEO's weekly panel of ChatGPT answers to B2B software questions, over eight weeks from August 9 to September 27, 2026, 1,799 of 5,712 answers had a reddit.com URL in their search results. None of those 1,799 cited Reddit. In 1,757 of them, no search the model ran contained the word "reddit". The threads came back inside searches for other things, such as a vendor's official pricing, and the citations went to the vendors' own sites. So a falling Reddit citation share is a poor scorecard for Reddit work. Judge that work by whether your brand gets recommended.**
## What the August reports saw
Several AI visibility trackers reported in August that consumer ChatGPT had nearly stopped citing Reddit. Promptwatch measured Reddit at an average 3.83% of ChatGPT Search citations from July 18 to August 7, 2026, and 0.52% by August 14 to 17. It also saw the share of ChatGPT's background searches using the `site:` operator (which limits a search to one named domain) jump from about 0.37% to 16.8% in a single day, August 8. Elmo's series of the ChatGPT interface fell from 4.67% to 0.38% of citations over the same windows. Elmo named three places the change could sit: which sources the engine ranks higher, which queries it sends, and which retrieved pages it turns into visible links.
In Trackerly's data, Reddit threads stayed at 25% to 34% of the pages ChatGPT consulted on every day from August 13 to 20, while dropping out of the citations. The break came on August 13 and 14. What happened on those days is not public, and Trackerly wrote that neither of its two candidate causes, a model update or a change in how ChatGPT picks which retrieved pages to cite, is confirmed. TechCrunch reported on August 6 that GPT-5.6 Luna would become the default model for Free and Go users, with the changes arriving that week. Trackerly wrote that the timing coincides with Luna becoming the default model and that the GPT-5.6 rollout was still landing the week of August 13. No source confirms it as the cause.
## In our panel, Reddit is in the results and missing from the citations
DecaGEO asks ChatGPT the same unbranded buying questions every week across ten B2B software categories, 714 answers per week, US English, on a fixed model version (GPT-5.6 Terra since July 26). The counts below compare two lists per answer, the URLs its web searches returned and the URLs the final answer cites.
From August 9 to September 27, 1,799 of 5,712 answers (31.5%) had at least one reddit.com URL in their search results. The weekly share stayed between 28.9% and 33.9%. The number of those answers that cited reddit.com was 0 in every week.
This panel has no August cliff to show, because Reddit was already close to zero in its citations. On GPT-5.4, from May 3 to July 19, reddit.com took 57 of 98,493 citations. Since the model change on July 26 it has been cited once in 44,657 citations, and that one was a Reddit Pro product page on business.reddit.com in the week of August 2. Trackerly's data and this panel land on the same shape, Reddit retrieved and left uncited, counted in different units (share of consulted pages there, share of answers here).
How often Reddit turns up in the results depends on the category:
| Category | Answers with a reddit.com URL in results | Share |
| - | - | - |
| GEO | 425 of 504 | 84.3% |
| Influencer Marketing Platforms | 272 of 632 | 43.0% |
| AI Image Generators | 171 of 472 | 36.2% |
| AI Writing Assistants | 159 of 472 | 33.7% |
| Help Desk | 166 of 632 | 26.3% |
| SEO | 163 of 632 | 25.8% |
| CRM | 138 of 632 | 21.8% |
| Email Marketing | 138 of 632 | 21.8% |
| Marketing Automation | 90 of 472 | 19.1% |
| Project Management | 77 of 632 | 12.2% |
*ChatGPT (GPT-5.6 Terra), US, English, weeks of August 9 to September 27, 2026. Denominator is every answer in the category over the eight weeks. Cited reddit.com: 0 in every category.*
Leave out GEO and the figure is 1,374 of 5,208 answers (26.4%), with the other nine categories between 12.2% and 43.0%.
## Reddit came along with searches for vendors
Of the 1,799 answers with Reddit in their results, 1,757 had no search containing the word "reddit". The threads arrived inside searches for something else.
From August 9 to September 6, 1,348 of the model's search calls brought back a reddit.com URL. None of those calls consisted only of `site:` queries. Every one included at least one open query, one that was not limited to a single domain.
In a sample of 18 calls from the week of September 6 that used no `site:` query at all, two per category outside GEO, almost every query named a specific product, and most asked for its official pricing or features. A call returns one set of results for all its queries, so each thread below belongs to the call as a whole.
* A call checking Pipedrive, HubSpot, Salesflare and Less Annoying CRM for official pipeline and forecasting features brought back `r/crmsoftware/.../salesflare_vs_pipedrive_for_a_small_business`.
* A call checking ActiveCampaign's forms, segmentation and CRM features, plus Brevo's, brought back `r/activecampaign/.../does_activecampaign_work_with_outlook`.
* A call checking official pricing for ActiveCampaign, Customer.io, Brevo and Mailchimp brought back `r/mailchimp/.../plan_comparisons_which_one_is_right_for_you`.
In 10 of the 18, the thread's URL names a brand the call was checking, as in the three above. In these calls ChatGPT had already named the vendors it wanted to verify, and the Reddit threads came back while it searched for their official details. The 18 were picked by their order within one week, so they show the pattern without measuring how common it is.
GEO is the one category where the model typed "reddit" itself, in 50 answers. None of the prompts behind those answers mentions Reddit. They ask for GEO tools that monitor reviews, forums and media mentions. The model added "Reddit" to searches about reviews and forums, such as `site:peec.ai citation sources Reddit reviews forums AI visibility` and `site:otterly.ai AI search monitoring citations reviews Reddit`. These two searches read as checks on a vendor's own site for whether the tool tracks Reddit, a feature question about the product.
## Where the citations went
Over the same eight weeks, 33,937 of 35,709 citations (95.0%) pointed to the website of a vendor listed in that category. Answers with Reddit in their results sent 92.7% of their citations to vendor sites, and the rest sent 96.2%. Between 90.5% and 92.7% of the model's individual search queries each week since July 26 used `site:` on a named domain.
That fits what DecaGEO found at the model change, when [`site:` searches jumped from 38% to 90% while the destination of citations barely moved](/docs/gpt-5-6-vs-gpt-5-4-search-citation-behavior). Which vendor pages win those citations is covered in [Which Pages ChatGPT Actually Cites and Why](/docs/which-pages-chatgpt-cites).
## How to judge Reddit work instead
A reddit.com citation share counts whether a thread earned a visible link. In these software answers that link was already absent, with or without the August change, so a falling share says little about whether your Reddit work is doing anything.
Reddit does sit in the search results ChatGPT gets back while it checks brands it has already named. Seeing those threads may change which of the checked brands end up recommended. If that holds, the effect would show up in how often your brand is recommended, and that is the number to watch.
1. **Track whether your brand is recommended, week over week.** DecaGEO's public category rankings show each brand's Mention Rate, the share of that category's answers that recommend it, with no signup, and the free view keeps the last four weeks. Write down your weekly Mention Rate starting before a Reddit push, so the weeks before it stay on record after they leave that window, and compare them with the weeks after. The answer text behind each ranking (Prompt & AI Response) shows which brands were recommended next to yours.
2. **Make sure a search for your brand's official details has something to return.** In the examples above, the searches that pulled in Reddit threads looked like "*Brand* official pricing" and "*Brand* official *feature*", and 95.0% of citations went to vendor sites. Check that your pricing, plan and feature pages state plan names, prices and feature names in the page text, where a search can return them.
## What these numbers do not say
"In the search results" means the URL was in the list a search returned to the model during that answer. It does not mean the model opened the thread or read it.
The panel asks unbranded buying questions about B2B software in ten categories, and these counts do not extend to questions in other areas, such as shopping, health or local services. They also do not describe the August event, which Promptwatch and Elmo measured in the ChatGPT interface.
## FAQ
### Did ChatGPT stop citing Reddit?
Promptwatch and Elmo, which track the ChatGPT interface, reported Reddit's citation share falling from 3.83% and 4.67% to under 1% in mid-August 2026. In DecaGEO's panel of B2B software questions, reddit.com was cited once in 44,657 citations from July 26 to September 27, while Reddit URLs appeared in the search results of 31.5% of answers from August 9 on. See [the panel section](#in-our-panel-reddit-is-in-the-results-and-missing-from-the-citations).
### Why does ChatGPT get Reddit results if it does not cite them?
Outside the GEO category, no search the model ran from August 9 to September 27 contained the word "reddit", so the threads came back inside searches for other things. In the search calls we sampled, those were searches for vendors by name, for example `HubSpot official sales forecasting feature deal pipeline sales hub pricing`. See [Reddit came along with searches for vendors](#reddit-came-along-with-searches-for-vendors).
### Should I stop doing Reddit marketing for AI visibility?
Do not decide it from reddit.com citation share. In DecaGEO's panel of B2B software answers that share sat near zero before and after August. Judge the work by whether your brand is recommended in your category's answers over several weeks. See [How to judge Reddit work instead](#how-to-judge-reddit-work-instead).
### What should I measure instead of Reddit citations?
Your brand's Mention Rate, the share of a category's ChatGPT answers that recommend you, tracked across several weeks. DecaGEO's public rankings show it by category without signup.
## How we measured
The panel's questions, schedule and metric definitions are described on the [methodology page](https://decageo.ai/methodology). What is specific to these figures:
* **Window and model.** Eight weekly runs, weeks of August 9 to September 27, 2026, all on GPT-5.6 Terra, 714 answers per week. The GPT-5.4 citation figures cover the weeks of May 3 to July 19.
* **Reddit in results.** An answer counts once if any URL on reddit.com or a reddit.com subdomain appears in the results returned by any of its web searches. **Cited** means the final answer links a URL whose root domain is reddit.com.
* **Search calls.** The model sends several queries per search call. A call counts as `site:` only if every query in it uses `site:`. This breakdown covers the weeks of August 9 to September 6.
* **Vendor sites.** A citation counts as a vendor citation when its root domain matches the root domain of a product site listed in that category's rankings.
Related: [ChatGPT's site: Searches Jumped From 38% to 90%. Its Citations Barely Moved.](/docs/gpt-5-6-vs-gpt-5-4-search-citation-behavior) · [Which Pages ChatGPT Actually Cites and Why](/docs/which-pages-chatgpt-cites)
External reports cited: [Promptwatch](https://promptwatch.com/blog/chatgpt-stop-citing-reddit) (August 20, updated September 8, 2026) · [Elmo](https://www.elmohq.com/blog/chatgpt-ui-reddit-citations-api) (updated September 11, 2026) · [Trackerly](https://trackerly.ai/blog/chatgpt-5-6-reddit-citations) (August 20, 2026) · [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/06/openai-brings-unlimited-chatgpt-text-chats-to-free-users/) (August 6, 2026)