Google pays Reddit $60M a year. For what, exactly?

Reddit just told Google: pay up or lose access.

Per the Wall Street Journal, Reddit is weighing whether to restrict Google’s ability to use its content as the two renegotiate their AI data licensing deal… an agreement signed in 2024 worth roughly $60M a year. The market noticed. Reddit’s stock dropped as much as 8% on the news.

Here’s what that $60M actually buys.

Reddit isn’t negotiating from weakness. It’s negotiating from the single strongest citation position on the internet:

1. Ahrefs analyzed 9.6 million ChatGPT queries: Reddit is the most cited domain, with 847K+ mentions… nearly double Wikipedia in second place.
2. Our own 60-day study with AirOps tracked 57.2 million citations across 50 B2B brands. Reddit accounted for 20.8% of all external citations. On unbranded discovery queries… “best compliance software,” “top CRM for startups”… that share climbs to 30.9%.

These numbers should make it very clear why Reddit matters STILL to brands no matter where this negotiation nets out. Unbranded discovery is the bottom of the funnel.. The pipeline is being shaped by it. It’s the moment a buyer who’s never heard of you asks a machine who to trust. And nearly a third of the sources shaping that answer come from one platform.

And Reddit’s leverage runs deeper than citations. When we analyzed 8,566 keywords across 14 SaaS domains, Reddit outranked every single vendor simultaneously on 957K monthly searches. On keywords with $50+ CPCs… the exact terms you pay the most for… Reddit wins 67.3% of the time. And 77% of the search volume Reddit wins comes from generic category keywords, the ones that drive pipeline. Reddit knows precisely what its real estate is worth. Google’s own search results are the appraisal.

Here’s my honest read on where this goes in the coming months:

The details of the Google-Reddit partnership will probably change. The price, the terms, what access looks like… all of it is in play. But there’s no question that today, in the immediate term, Reddit is a driving factor of LLM responses. That’s true right now regardless of how the negotiation ends.

Will Reddit continue to influence Google as much as it does? Probably not.

Honestly, the only scenario where I see that influence holding is if Google tried to acquire Reddit outright. This is not a prediction. This is likely not even possible… Given the regulatory climate against big tech, that would be difficult.

What I do believe is possible… likely, even… is that Google leans harder into the domains it already owns. Starting with YouTube.com.

YouTube Will Be The Most Important Domain In Search

Google doesn’t need to pay for YouTube. It doesn’t need to negotiate with YouTube. Every signal we’re seeing suggests Google’s AI surfaces already favor its own properties. If the Reddit pipeline gets expensive or gets cut, YouTube becomes the obvious replacement for authentic, human-generated content inside AI answers.

That’s the competitive edge hiding in this story. The marketers who build YouTube presence now are positioning for where Google’s AI is heading, not where it’s been.

A Few Things To Consider:

1. Build YouTube before the shift, not after. We found 80% of B2B demo pipeline keywords already have YouTube results. If Google rotates toward owned domains, video becomes citation infrastructure.
2. Keep investing in Reddit today. The citation data is what it is. Buyers are comparing you in threads right now, and AI is reading them. Our Vanta breakdown this week shows a brand winning AI recommendations partly through Reddit threads it doesn’t even participate in.
3. Never build on one platform’s licensing deal. This negotiation is the proof. Citation sources you don’t control can be repriced or unplugged overnight. Spread your presence across the surfaces AI pulls from: communities, video, review sites, earned media.
4. Track your Share of Model by engine. Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity weight sources differently. If Reddit’s weight inside Google drops, you want to see it in your own data the week it happens, not in a headline six months later.

Want to learn how we’re doing this for B2B brands? Book 30 minutes with our strategists to discuss how we’re building GEO/AEO/SEO moats on the back of YouTube, Reddit & On-Site Optimization..

— Ross

📊 The Data Point To Keep In Mind

Last fall, Reddit went from being cited in roughly 60% of ChatGPT responses to around 10% in a matter of weeks. It has since recovered to the top spot. Translation: citation share is rented, never owned. Diversify accordingly. Here’s a snapshot from the latest Ahrefs ChatGPT Citation report that is worth keeping top of mind:

⚡️ Quick Hits

• Reddit’s licensing business did ~$140M in 2025 across its Google (~$60M) and OpenAI (~$70M) deals. Analysts floated a 5-8x fee increase ask. The era of free training data is over.
• Google’s counter: its AI products “send billions of clicks” to the web. Publishers aren’t buying it… AI Overviews answering questions in-page is exactly why Reddit wants a new deal.
• Reddit reports Q2 earnings within days. If licensing revenue guidance moves, this negotiation is why.

🔗 From the Lab

• We Analyzed 8,566 Keywords to Measure Reddit’s Impact on B2B Search
• How Vanta’s $517K/Month SEO Moat Translates Into AI Visibility
• YouTube Dominates: 80% of Your B2B Demo Pipeline Is Already on YouTube