Reddit’s search function is gaining traction with users, with the company reporting a 30% year-on-year increase in weekly search users as of its first quarter 2026 earnings call, held on Thursday, May 1, 2026. CEO Steve Huffman credited the growth to sustained investment in the search engine and the addition of AI features, including Reddit Answers.
“On search, we have seen great performance. Search DAUs, WAUs, and queries are up meaningfully year-over-year. It’s a great driver of retention and DAUs. The search team is, quite frankly, I think doing a great job. If you use Reddit Answers, you can see it is better integrated into the product,” Huffman said on the company’s post-results conference call.
Huffman described search as one of the major drivers of user acquisition and retention on the platform. He also noted that around 40% of conversations on Reddit are commercial in nature, and that 84% of shoppers feel more confident in their buying decisions after researching on Reddit. In February 2026, Reddit began testing product placement through AI search results in the U.S.
The platform ended Q1 2026 with more than 493 million weekly active unique users, up 23% year-over-year, and approximately 126 million daily active unique users, a 17% increase from the prior year. U.S. daily active unique users reached 53.5 million, a 7% improvement, while international daily active unique users grew 26% to 73.3 million. The company said it aims to reach one billion daily users worldwide and 100 million daily users in the U.S.
Beyond search, Reddit’s machine translation feature — now supporting more than 30 languages — has also contributed to user growth in recent quarters, the company said.
Reddit reported Q1 2026 revenue of $663 million, surpassing Wall Street’s expectation of $609.8 million. The company also reported capital expenditures of just $1 million for the quarter.
Source: TechCrunch