Using Google to search for Reddit posts could soon get a lot trickier
Basing your decisions on the opinions of anonymous internet users is probably not the best idea, but seeing as how big platforms like Reddit are, sometimes the information you find can be useful, especially since other users can chime in and offer alternative suggestions or additional information.
But if you use Google to try and search for Reddit posts in the future, it might be a little trickier. This is because according to a report from The Washington Post, they claim that Reddit is apparently planning on blocking Google’s search crawler. This means that if you use the Google trick “site:reddit.com” in your search strings, it will no longer return Reddit posts in its results.
There could be due to a number of reasons why Reddit is choosing to do this. While Google search is extremely useful, especially for quick answers which are sourced from various websites in the search cards, publishers aren’t too thrilled by this. This is because if users can find what they need in the search cards, it doesn’t take them to the actual website which impacts the overall visitors a site gets, which in turn can also affect ad revenue which might be based on views and/or clicks.
Many publishers in the past haven’t been thrilled with platforms such as Google, who they accuse of mining its information without compensating them in return.
Source: Boing Boing