How to Use Reddit for Keyword Research and Find Content Gaps

Reddit Shows Up in 84% of Google’s Forum Results. What Is Your Content Missing?

Reddit is no longer sitting on the edge of Google Search.

Ahrefs analysed 145 million US Google results and found that when Google showed its Discussions and Forums feature, Reddit appeared in 83.9% of those results worldwide. Ahrefs also estimates Reddit’s organic Google traffic has grown roughly 21x in five years, from around 58 million to more than 1.2 billion monthly visits. 

That creates an SEO opportunity, but probably not the one you think.

We do not look at Reddit as another place to collect hundreds of keywords.

At Verve, we use it to answer a different question:

What are people discussing that our content brief has failed to account for?

Your Keyword Tool Can Find the Right Keyword and Still Leave You With the Wrong Page

Keyword tools are excellent at showing:

• search volume,
• keyword difficulty,
• related terms,
• CPC,
• ranking competitors.

But they do not always reveal what makes a decision difficult.

Reddit conversations can surface:

• questions people keep asking,
• objections,
• comparisons,
• confusing terminology,
• problems people have already tried to solve.

Ahrefs found that 98.7% of Discussions and Forums appearances were attached to informational-intent queries, while 40.9% also carried commercial intent. Intent classifications can overlap, but the pattern matters: forums frequently surface while people are researching and evaluating.

What the stat tells us: Reddit can add context where the keyword only gives us the topic.

Our rule at Verve

We do not use Reddit to validate search demand. We use it to challenge the content brief.

Read more: How Reddit Communities Help Brands Build Trust, Sales, and AI Visibility

Run the Verve Reddit Gap Check Before You Finalise the Brief

Our process is deliberately simple:

Keyword → SERP → Conversation → Gap → Page

1. Start with a validated keyword.
We still want evidence that people search for the topic.

2. Check the live SERP.
Understand what Google is already rewarding.

3. Find relevant Reddit conversations.
Look beyond post titles and read what people are actually discussing.

4. Identify the gaps.
What questions, objections or comparisons keep appearing that ranking pages barely address?

5. Improve the page.
Decide which insights genuinely deserve to change the brief.

Reddit says 1 in 5 shoppers deliberately add “Reddit” to their search queries when looking for better information. 

What the stat tells us: some users actively seek the additional context they feel ordinary search results are missing.

What Should You Actually Look for on Reddit?

Not more keywords.

Look for signals that can improve the page.

Reddit reported a 40% year-over-year increase in high-intent shopping conversations in 2026, while 84% of Reddit shoppers said researching products there made them feel more secure about a purchase. These are Reddit’s own first-party figures, so we treat them as platform research rather than independent measurement. 

What the stats tell us: the useful material is often not another keyword. It is the hesitation, comparison or proof behind the decision.

At Verve, the output of Reddit research may therefore be:

an FAQ → a comparison criterion → a missing proof point → a clearer limitation → a section added to an existing page

Not necessarily another URL.

One Popular Reddit Thread Does Not Equal Search Demand

This is where Reddit research can go wrong.

A thread can have hundreds of comments and still represent little meaningful Google search demand.

Ahrefs found that Google's Discussions and Forums feature appeared in 11.7% of the 145 million US SERPs studied. Reddit dominated when the feature appeared, but forums were not present everywhere. 

So we keep the distinction clear:

Keyword tools validate demand. Reddit enriches understanding.

A highly active Reddit conversation can make a page better without becoming a target keyword itself.

Do Not Turn Every Reddit Question Into Another Blog

Ahrefs also found that 43.2% of Discussions and Forums appearances came from queries containing five or more words. 

Longer searches often expose specific questions and edge cases.

But that does not mean each one deserves a new page.

A useful Reddit insight may belong in:

• one FAQ,
• a comparison row,
• a pricing explanation,
• a proof block,
• or an existing landing page.

Our second rule is:

A Reddit insight does not automatically become a keyword, and a keyword does not automatically become a new page.

The better question is:

Does this insight need its own page, or can it make an existing page substantially more useful?

What If Reddit Itself Is Already Ranking?

Then there are two separate opportunities.

1. Improve your owned content

Study the conversation and identify what your own page needs to answer better.

That is the job of this process.

2. Build visibility on Reddit itself

That requires a different strategy around subreddit selection, participation, Reddit content and Google visibility.

Read more: Reddit SEO Guide to Increasing Brand Visibility in Google in 2026

Reddit Is Showing Up in AI Search Too

This is no longer only about Google's traditional results.

In Ahrefs' July 2026 datasets, Reddit was:

• #1 in Google AI Mode, with 19.9% mention share,
• #2 in Google AI Overviews, with 18.5%,
• #1 in ChatGPT, with 16.7%,
• #1 in Gemini, with 29.2%.

What the stats tell us: Reddit conversations are being surfaced across both traditional search and AI discovery.

For the broader implications for trust, brand visibility and AI search, read: How Reddit Communities Help Brands Build Trust, Sales, and AI Visibility

Reddit Should Give You a Better Page, Not Just More Keywords

Take:

Best CRM for Small Business

A standard brief may cover:

Features → Pricing → Integrations → Best tools

Reddit conversations may reveal that people actually care about:

Setup → Migration → Support → Hidden costs → Scaling → Who should avoid each option

That changes the content.

It does not necessarily change the target keyword.

Reddit did not give us a better keyword. It gave us a better page.

That is why we treat Reddit as one layer of SEO research, not the entire research process.

Keyword research tells us what people search.

The SERP tells us what Google currently rewards.

Reddit can reveal what people are still asking, comparing or worrying about.

Keyword → SERP → Conversation → Better Page
 

Written by Dilshad, Content Lead at Verve Media

Dilshad builds content strategies that are not just written for algorithms, but for how people actually search, compare, trust and choose brands online.