Reddit, Search, Go! Reddit Search As A Good Alternative For Google

Have you already tried a Reddit search to look for a particular topic after getting disappointed with Google?

More than just an online forum, Reddit also functions as a search engine, given the plethora of virtual discussions taking place there every day.

In one Hacker News thread, several users said that they opted to use Reddit to search for information.

For scholastic endeavors, some academics and experts resorted to Reddit.

In her article published by the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science (SICSS), Russian sociologist Elizaveta Sivak, mentioned two research papers that involved Reddit search.

COPYRIGHT_MARX: Published on https://marxcommunications.com/reddit-search/ by Keith Peterson on 2022-05-03T13:01:35.556Z

One is titled, “Narrative Paths and Negotiation of Power in Birth Stories (2019),” published by the Association for Computing Machinery. A team from Cornell University in New York composed of a data scientist and two associate professors used Reddit as a resource.

The said team referred to the comments found at the subreddit (Reddit’s term for a subforum) “Baby Bumps” (or “r/BabyBumps”).

Another paper is this one: “Mental Health Discourse on Reddit: Self-Disclosure, Social Support, and Anonymity (2014),” published by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. For this research, a computational social science researcher and university professor and a software engineer made the subreddit “r/Depression” as one of their references.

It seems, then, that credibility attaches itself to Reddit, as people rely on it for information, from basic questions/topics to that of the academic level.

Let’s see how Reddit search fares when it comes to providing the kind of information netizens are really looking for.

Reddit Search Engine

Founded in 2005, Reddit is more popular for being a social media site than as a search engine.

However, for Elizaveta Sivak, who also happens to be the director of the Institute of Education in Moscow, Reddit search proves to be useful.

Sivak described Reddit in her SICSS article as “an interesting source of data for research in social sciences.”

For her, Reddit search makes researching easy and accessible.

“The main strength of Reddit as a data source seems to be that it gives access to clusters of hard-to-reach populations and people with not very common characteristics,” she wrote.

As of January 2021, according to its website, Reddit had approximately 100,000 communities or subreddits, with, more or less, 50 million daily unique visitors.

Well, as Reddit proclaims on its website: “Dive into anything.”

People from various backgrounds – economic, cultural, educational, etc. – participate in these communities/subreddits, from housewives to scientists to fashionistas to cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

Akshat Mahajan, for example, commented at Hacker News (as user “AkshatM”) how he trusted the community – the Redditors (what Reddit users are called) – as a source of reliable information.

When Mahajan, a software engineer at Cloudflare, moved to Boston, he went to the subreddit “r/boston” for “Bostonian’s recommendations.”

Barrett Shepherd, the director of the e-commerce company Simpl Fulfillment, tweeted last month that he would add the word “reddit” after whatever he would search for via Google.

“I’ve rarely had a question where I couldn’t find a thread on it,” Shepherd said.

Use Reddit search to look for subreddits and submissions (posts, pictures, videos). For a quick guide, go to “www.reddit.com/wiki/search/.”

To learn about the list of communities/subreddits, go to “www.reddit.com/reddits.” To find if a certain community or subforum exists, try “reddit.com/subreddits/search.”

You can also use AND, OR, and NOT in Reddit search (make sure each letter is in its uppercase form) just like when you use these three Boolean operators in Google.

The following links below can help you with your Reddit search:

(1) www.highervisibility.com/free-seo-tools/keyworddit (use this when searching for a particular keyword in a subreddit)

(2) redditcommentsearch.com

(3) redditsearchtool.com

(4) redditsearch.io

Reddit Search User

As of June 2021, according to German statistics portal Statista, 48.93 percent of Reddit users were from the U.S. Others were from the U.K. (7.73 percent), Canada (7.52 percent), Australia (3.85 percent) and Germany (3.12 percent).

To search for a Redditor/author, go to Reddit.com. At the homepage, look for the search bar. Then type there the username of the author or Redditor you’re looking for. See the screenshot below by Business Insider:

If that one does not work, then type “https://www.reddit.com/user/XXX” while you’re still logged on to Redit.com. Now change “XXX” with the name of the Reddit user/Redditor/author. For example, “www.reddit.com/user/JohnSmith.”

You may also try these two links when searching for a Reddit search for authors or Redditors:

(1) www.redective.com

(2) camas.github.io/reddit-search

In January 2020, a Redditor posted the above-mentioned link at the subreddit “r/pushshift.” According to the said Redditor, he/she created it as an “alternative” to redditsearch.io when searching for a Redditor/author.

Can Reddit Searches Be Tracked?

After using Reddit search, are you worried that the browser you’re using is tracking what you’re searching?

To ease your mind, according to a post at the subreddit “r/help,” based on its privacy policy, Reddit doesn’t keep track of searches. It applies whether you’re using Reddit search on a desktop or a smartphone via the Reddit app.

The post suggested that all Reddit users should read the site’s “How Information About You Is Shared” to know and understand its privacy policy.

When using Reddit search, third-party cookies, however, may track down one’s online activities.

Conclusion

The strength of Reddit search comes in the number of people contributing information (acquired from school, work, and/or real-life/first-hand experiences) to its numerous subforums (subreddits).

That’s what Elizaveta Sivak underscored. Reddit’s assets are the Redditors themselves.

San Francisco-based software engineer Dmitri Kyle Brereton also vouches for Reddit search as a good option, according to a 2022 article by business magazine Fast Company.

The article’s author, Mark Sullivan, interpreted Brereton’s argument like this: go to Reddit “if . . . you’re trying to find actual opinions from real people.”

As of January 2022, according to Statista, there were approximately 430 million Reddit users worldwide. From January to June 2021, an estimated 1.6 billion visited Reddit.com.

See how people worldwide, particularly from the U.S., flock to Reddit to search for, to share, and/or to exchange information?

Try Reddit search and be ready to cast your nets as you sail in a new ocean of information.

About The Authors

Keith Peterson - I'm an expert IT marketing professional with over 10 years of experience in various Digital Marketing channels such as SEO (search engine optimization), SEM (search engine marketing), SMO (social media optimization), ORM (online reputation management), PPC (Google Adwords, Bing Adwords), Lead Generation, Adwords campaign management, Blogging (Corporate and Personal), and so on. Web development and design are unquestionably another of my passions. In fast-paced, high-pressure environments, I excel as an SEO Executive, SEO Analyst, SR SEO Analyst, team leader, and digital marketing strategist, efficiently managing multiple projects, prioritizing and meeting tight deadlines, analyzing and solving problems.