Google announced a deal with Reddit to gain access to real-time access to all of its content so that Google can show even more Reddit content than it already does and to gain access to all of its content for training models.
The agreement between Google and Reddit is explicit that this will result in increased visibility for Reddit discussions in various Google products, which may include various search surfaces across a range of topics and contexts.
Google’s access to a wider range of Reddit content in a structured format will the ability of language models to understand human conversations and writing styles. AI is increasingly used in search so this could in turn affect how content is understood and ranked in Google search.
Reddit gains access to Google’s Vertex AI platform to improve search and create other “capabilities” with it. The deal is reported to be worth $60 million dollars per year for Reddit.
Reddit, Google Search And AI
Reddit has become a popular destination for people to have discussions on virtually any topic, making it a such a popular destination for people seeking information that searchers append the word “Reddit” to searches to surface content directly from Reddit and avoid Google’s search results altogether.
Conversations on Reddit are also useful for training large language models because of the diversity of content topics, as a deep source of conversational data written in multiple forms of writing.
Structured Reddit Content
Content that is on the web is said to be unstructured data. Machines need to process unstructured data to remove the irrelevant bits like navigation and extract the main content. It also has to make sense of the upvoted and downvoted content.
Structured data however is data that’s already sorted into its component parts so that there is no ambiguity about the data.
Google now has access to all of that data in real-time and in a structured format that will make it easier for Google to make sense of the information and use it more efficiently, with what Google describes as “enhanced signals” that will help Google to display it in more useful ways.
The announcement by both Google and Reddit state that one of Google’s intentions is to show more content from Reddit.
Google explained how they will use the content:
“Over the years, we’ve seen that people increasingly use Google to search for helpful content on Reddit to find product recommendations, travel advice and much more. We know people find this information useful, so we’re developing ways to make it even easier to access across Google products. This partnership will facilitate more content-forward displays of Reddit information that will make our products more helpful for our users and make it easier to participate in Reddit communities and conversations.”
Another component of the deal mentioned by both Google and Reddit is that the partnership will help people participate in Reddit conversations.
Reddit posted:
“Our work with Google will make it easier for people to find, discover, and engage in content and communities on Reddit that are most relevant to them.”
Read Google’s announcement:
An expanded partnership with Reddit
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