Half a trillion dollars says we don't click anymore

I was just doing my daily news checks, and when Google's share value is this big and on most of the major news channels, there's more to the story than what we get told and what the Google spokesman says. And I promise I'm not being a conspiracy theorist there, that is not and will never be who I am, I just like to try and read between the headlines. So I did, and the very next day Reddit had the worst day in its history, for the same reason.

Read between the headlines

On Wednesday 28 October, Alphabet, the company that owns Google, reported its numbers. Search ad money still grew 12% to $63.35 billion, but that's down from 19% at the start of the year and 17% in the summer, and it missed what Wall Street expected. On Thursday the shares fell 12.6%, Google's worst day since it went public in 2004, and about $500 billion of value was gone, the second biggest one day wipeout in American stock market history. To be fair, it wasn't all down to AI, Google is spending fortunes on data centres and lost money on its investments too. But the line that caught my eye came from Google's own chief business officer, who told investors that the strong growth in AI Mode had an impact, because AI Mode makes them less money.

On Friday 30 October, Reddit's shares fell 29%, its worst day since it became a public company, and more than $7 billion was gone. Its sales were up 53%, so that's not why. It fell because searches sent it over a million fewer visits a week in October, and its CEO told investors "the AI Mode does not drive traffic." He also said Google is crawling Reddit as hard as ever. So Google is still reading everything, it's just not sending anyone.

I checked Reddit's Google numbers myself. In the US it's now number one on Google for about 10.7 million searches, far more than a year ago, and its estimated visits from Google fell by about 14% between June and October. It's winning on Google and losing the visitor.

It's winning on Google and losing the visitor.

I told you so

My gut reaction was I told you so. I've been saying for ages that Google ads will have to completely restructure and find a new way. I keep saying that we don't click, we ask, and this will also have a massive knock on effect on what SEO is and how we see it. I think Google will struggle, or reinvent itself.

And before anyone reminds me, yes, I wrote that Google won't be Kodak, and I still think that was right, it was a fact, and that's the point of these. Kodak protected film and refused to kill its own business. Google is doing the opposite, eating its own search money to build the asking, and taking a beating for it. But struggle could just mean it's not the king of the castle anymore, and about time. Then again, maybe it will be, there are lots of people at Google cleverer than me. Time will tell.

We don't click until we have to

The elephant in the room isn't the AI tool and how it works, it's that human behaviour is changing too. We expect to do less and get more, and we don't click until we need to or have to. Google's own boss told investors that questions in AI Mode are on average three times longer than normal searches, and one in five uses voice, images or documents.

And when the shopping agents and the other AI agents, like Grok Bot, Dot and Duet, become more mainstream, and they will, clicks will get hit again. It's happening, and it's happening now. Grok Bot went into beta in August and by the end of the month it was doing people's online shopping for them, OpenAI launched its dots at the end of September, and Anthropic launched Claude Duet on 21 October. Three of the biggest names, three agents that work for you while you're doing something else, in about ten weeks.

We don't click until we need to or have to.

It's not just clicks on websites either, we're slowing down on clicking ads. I'm not saying the ad will go, but as humans now, we see an ad and ask the AI about it before we click. Not all of us, but I do, and I can't be alone, and it's a pattern. And people don't trust ads mixed into AI answers: in a survey of AI users in September, 86% believed an ad influences the answer they get.

Working off data, not prediction

I love the irony in this one. In 2024 Reddit sold Google the right to train its AI on Reddit's content, for about $60 million a year, and Google used it to answer people's questions without sending them to Reddit. This is where people are working off data, not prediction. I've spoken about this so much, in my marketing too. We look at historic data, but the tools are changing and the human is changing, and it moves too fast. We all need to be more predictive now, and use data intelligently.

Believing your own immortality

Reddit's answer is to lock the door. It plans to make people log in to read it, testing it in some countries outside the US before the end of the year, and about six in ten of its daily visitors don't log in. I think it's the beginning of the end. If you start believing your own immortality, and think it's cool that people will pay for this info, then you're fucking deluded.

Human behaviour again, for a start. If Google is struggling to get the click, so will Reddit.

Then, do they risk pricing themselves out of the market? This is where we can use data. The share price dropping affects confidence, and in the same quarter Reddit spent $100 million buying back its own shares at an average of about $150, and on Friday they closed under $92. When the deal with Google comes up again in the first half of 2027, are you the right place for the AI to spend its money? You're not the only one with all the info, so why would I pay you? ChatGPT already started citing Reddit a lot less from the middle of August, and nobody has said why.

And for me the biggest one is the model itself. Reddit is a place to get real answers to real questions, yes? So isn't that just what ChatGPT is now? Reddit has been around for a long time, but we can get most of this from new sources now, and it feels a bit old fashioned. ChatGPT reached about a billion people a week in July, and Reddit's daily visitors stopped growing this summer.

Reddit is replaceable

So if Reddit fades, where does AI get its real human answers? From us. If Reddit stops, we still keep talking. It's on our sites, in the media, on socials, it's everywhere, and the more we begin to understand what we need to talk about, the more we will. And mate, if I was OpenAI or Anthropic or Elon Musk, I'd see that Reddit is replaceable, and become it. But a 2026 version of it, not what Reddit was before AI, because information is more available and faster than it's ever been.

Where does the money go next, who gets paid? Great question, and I don't know. I promise, if I did, I'd be doing it.

If I was OpenAI or Anthropic or Elon Musk, I'd see that Reddit is replaceable, and become it.

Be the answer

Ironically, I think it will get better for the little guy, but there's one massive caveat, and I've been speaking about this for ages. Your whole online digital footprint needs to be consistent. You need to be thinking about the questions people ask, not outdated keyword research and traditional SEO (my opinion, but watch this space, SEO is next), and be the answer. That's answerability. Be transparent, be a story, show the prices and the detail, make sure AI can read it, and then you will thrive. And do it now, because this will become the norm, so do it before your competitors wake up.