As search traffic dries up, Reddit announces it’s shifting to a logged-in experience

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Reddit has long attracted millions of users to its site through Google, with many even appending the word “Reddit” to their search queries for better answers. But as search traffic dries up amid the shift to AI-powered search, Reddit is rethinking its relationship with the open internet. In its third-quarter earnings call on Thursday, the company announced it’s transitioning to a primarily “logged-in experience.”

长期以来，Reddit 通过谷歌吸引了数百万用户访问其网站，许多人甚至会在搜索查询中加上“Reddit”一词以获得更好的答案。然而，随着人工智能搜索的兴起导致搜索流量枯竭，Reddit 正在重新思考其与开放互联网的关系。在周四的第三季度财报电话会议上，该公司宣布将转型为以“登录体验”为主的平台。

The move is designed to protect its data from AI scraping, allowing the company to instead forge lucrative licensing deals with model providers. But just as important, such a shift could help Reddit to increase its revenue even as it faces daily active user declines in its largest market, the U.S. Overall, Reddit’s global daily active users were flat quarter-over-quarter in Q3, reaching 130.3 million, while U.S. daily active users dropped from 53.2 million in Q2 to 50.7 million in Q3 and were down 2% year-over-year.

此举旨在保护其数据免受人工智能抓取，从而使公司能够与模型提供商达成利润丰厚的许可协议。同样重要的是，即使在最大的市场美国面临日活跃用户下降的情况下，这种转变也有助于 Reddit 增加收入。总体而言，Reddit 第三季度的全球日活跃用户环比持平，达到 1.303 亿，而美国日活跃用户则从第二季度的 5320 万下降至第三季度的 5070 万，同比下降了 2%。

The company is not alone in seeing such declines; the shift to an AI-centered web has impacted most websites and publishers by now, leading to fewer click-throughs, as AI summaries provide answers that don’t require website visits and Google’s traditional “ten blue links” have reduced relevance. (The change is now even impacting Google’s bottom line, its earnings revealed.) But at Reddit’s scale, the numbers associated with such a decline are enormous.

并非只有该公司面临此类下滑；向以人工智能为中心的网络转型目前已影响到大多数网站和出版商，导致点击率下降，因为人工智能摘要提供的答案无需访问网站，而谷歌传统的“十个蓝色链接”的相关性也已降低。（财报显示，这种变化甚至正在影响谷歌的利润。）但对于 Reddit 这样的规模而言，与这种下滑相关的数字是巨大的。

The company said search traffic referrals dropped by more than 1 million referrals on average per week in October. It warned that if the trend continues, daily active users could decline to a low-double-digit percentage by next quarter. (To play that out: a hypothetical 10% to 12% decline could bring Reddit to roughly 115 million to 117 million daily actives, down from 130.3 million in Q3. That’s a huge drop!)

该公司表示，10 月份平均每周的搜索流量引荐量下降了超过 100 万次。它警告称，如果这种趋势持续下去，到下个季度，日活跃用户可能会下降到低两位数的百分比。（推算一下：假设下降 10% 到 12%，Reddit 的日活跃用户可能会从第三季度的 1.303 亿降至约 1.15 亿到 1.17 亿。这是一个巨大的跌幅！）

At the same time, Reddit has gotten significantly better at monetizing its audience even as its growth weakens. Revenue increased 53% year-over-year to $895 million, ahead of Wall Street’s expectations of about $875 million. Net income rose 74% to $283 million. Advertising revenue grew 54% to $847 million while nonadvertising revenue, which includes its AI data-licensing business, grew 35% year-over-year to $48 million.

与此同时，尽管增长放缓，Reddit 在受众变现方面却取得了显著进步。营收同比增长 53%，达到 8.95 亿美元，超过了华尔街约 8.75 亿美元的预期。净利润增长 74%，达到 2.83 亿美元。广告收入增长 54%，达到 8.47 亿美元，而包括人工智能数据许可业务在内的非广告收入同比增长 35%，达到 4800 万美元。

And despite a 2% year-over-year decline in U.S. daily users, Reddit’s average revenue per daily active user in the U.S. rose 53% to $13.82. Globally, average revenue per daily active user increased 36% year-over-year to $6.87. Shifting to a logged-in experience could boost those numbers even higher because logged-in users are typically worth more to advertisers.

尽管美国日活跃用户同比下降了 2%，但 Reddit 在美国的每位日活跃用户平均收入却增长了 53%，达到 13.82 美元。在全球范围内，每位日活跃用户的平均收入同比增长 36%，达到 6.87 美元。转向登录体验可能会进一步提高这些数字，因为登录用户对广告商来说通常更有价值。

Unlike the logged-out users who often find their way to the site via search, logged-in users provide more signals about their interests and behaviors, which helps to better target and personalize ads. Those same signals would also help Reddit provide a more personalized experience to its users, which includes personalized feeds, recommendations of new communities to subscribe to, and pushes to vote, comment, participate, and more.

与通常通过搜索找到网站的未登录用户不同，登录用户提供了更多关于其兴趣和行为的信号，这有助于更好地定位和个性化广告。同样的信号也将帮助 Reddit 为用户提供更个性化的体验，包括个性化信息流、订阅新社区的推荐，以及投票、评论、参与等推送。

Still, a change of this magnitude could be the canary in the coal mine for the open web. “I don’t know about you, but as someone whose life has been defined by the open internet, it’s a big change for me,” wrote Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman in a post published on Reddit’s site. “But I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the right decision for our platform and the right decision for our business,” he said.

尽管如此，如此规模的变革可能是开放网络的一个预警信号。Reddit 联合创始人兼首席执行官史蒂夫·霍夫曼（Steve Huffman）在 Reddit 网站上发布的一篇文章中写道：“我不知道你们怎么想，但作为一个生活被开放互联网所定义的人，这对我来说是一个巨大的改变。”他说：“但我得出的结论是，这对我们的平台和业务来说是正确的决定。”

The company notes that the shift to the logged-in experience will not be an overnight change; it will first run tests in select markets outside the U.S. in the fourth quarter. It doesn’t yet have a timeline for when the change will be rolled out to all its users worldwide. It also acknowledged that access to a logged-out front page is important.

该公司指出，向登录体验的转变不会一蹴而就；它将在第四季度首先在美国以外的部分市场进行测试。目前还没有关于何时向全球所有用户推广这一变更的时间表。它还承认，保留未登录首页的访问权限非常重要。

Plus, Reddit pointed out that being logged in doesn’t mean having to give up anonymity, nor will it remove its option to browse anonymously through its “incognito mode” experience, which is being rebuilt. “There are still plenty of questions that are unanswered, particularly around where the boundaries should be between logged-in and logged-out experiences,” Hoffman wrote. “This is a big evolution for Reddit, and not one we’re taking lightly. But I believe it’s the right next step for the platform and for our future.”

此外，Reddit 指出，登录并不意味着必须放弃匿名性，也不会取消通过其正在重建的“隐身模式”进行匿名浏览的选项。霍夫曼写道：“仍有许多问题悬而未决，特别是在登录体验和未登录体验之间的界限应该在哪里。这对 Reddit 来说是一次重大演变，我们不会掉以轻心。但我相信这是平台和我们未来迈出的正确一步。”