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Reddit's top-3 share after the May 2026 core update

SE Ranking tracked 100,000 keywords in 20 niches and measured Reddit's share of Google's top three results. This piece reviews its method and limits.

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Written byAdam Hafez
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Key takeaways

  • SE Ranking measured Reddit's share of all top-three organic positions at 10.24% after the May 2026 core update, up from 8.56% after the March update.
  • The number of tracked keywords where Reddit held the number one result rose from 8,993 to 13,872, a 54% increase.
  • Reddit's top-three share grew in all 20 niches in the sample, so the gain was not confined to one topic area.
  • YouTube's share of top-three positions moved the other way, falling from 2.50% to 2.14% over the same two snapshots.
  • The data covers organic blue links only, for one US location and before-and-after snapshots, so it cannot speak to SERP features, other regions or AI answers.

Forum and community content is one of the most argued-about shifts in Google results, and most of the arguing rests on anecdotes. SE Ranking published a dataset that puts numbers on one part of it: how much of the top three organic positions Reddit occupied across a fixed keyword set, before and after the May 2026 core update. This piece sets out what that study did and what it can support.

What did SE Ranking measure?

SE Ranking tracked organic results for the same 100,000 keywords across 20 niches in the New York location. It compared snapshots taken before the May 2026 core update (April 15, 2026) and after it (June 2, 2026), and reported against the earlier March 2026 update as well. Every share in the study covers organic blue links only.

Because the keyword set is fixed, a change in Reddit’s share means Reddit URLs replaced other URLs on the same queries. It is a measure of position share at the top of the results, not of traffic, clicks or revenue.

What did the study find about Reddit?

Reddit’s share of all top-three positions rose to 10.24% after the May update, from 8.56% after March. The number of keywords where Reddit held the number one result rose from 8,993 to 13,872, a 54% increase. SE Ranking reports that Reddit grew in all 20 niches, which is the detail that separates this from a single-topic effect.

YouTube moved in the opposite direction over the same snapshots, with its share of top-three positions falling to 2.14% from 2.50%. Search Engine Journal’s coverage of the study is linked in the sources for readers who want a second write-up, and it is consistent with these headline figures.

Does this show the core update caused it?

No, and the study does not claim to. SE Ranking describes the data as before-and-after snapshots and notes that rankings keep shifting after an update finishes rolling out. A fixed 100,000-keyword sample from one location shows what changed on those queries in that window, and it cannot isolate the update from other changes Google made around the same time.

For practitioners, the defensible reading is narrow: on this keyword set, Reddit URLs took a larger share of the top three after the May update than after the March one. Anything about your own site’s traffic needs your own core update data, not this dataset.

What is not in this study?

It does not cover SERP features, AI Overviews or AI answers, other countries, or other forum and Q&A sites such as Quora. SE Ranking’s keyword set is its own selection, so it is not a random sample of Google queries.

The evidence

Sample
100,000 keywords, 20 niches, one US location (New York)

Hypothesis: SE Ranking set out to test whether Google's May 2026 core update changed which domains hold the top organic positions, and in particular whether forum and community content, with Reddit as the largest example, gained share of the top three results across a broad set of niches rather than in a single topic area.

Method: This piece reviews SE Ranking's own analysis of the May 2026 core update. SE Ranking looked at organic results for the same 100,000 keywords across 20 niches in the New York (USA) location, comparing snapshots taken before the update (April 15, 2026) and after it (June 2, 2026), alongside earlier snapshots around the March 2026 update. All domain and position shares cover organic blue links only. Shares are computed across all top-three positions in the tracked set, so they measure how much of the top of the results a domain occupies, not traffic or clicks.

Findings

  • Reddit's share of all top-three organic positions rose to 10.24% after the May 2026 update, up from 8.56% after the March update.
  • The number of keywords where Reddit holds the top result rose from 8,993 after March to 13,872 after May, a 54% jump.
  • Reddit grew its top-three presence in all 20 niches tracked, according to SE Ranking's niche breakdown.
  • YouTube's share of all top-three positions fell to 2.14% after the May update, down from 2.50% after March.

Limitations: This is a third-party study, not original SEO Madman research, and it measures a correlation with an update window, not proof that the update caused the change. SE Ranking states these are before-and-after snapshots and that rankings keep shifting after an update finishes rolling out. The data covers organic blue links only, from one US location, so SERP features and AI answers are outside it, and results could differ by region or keyword set. SE Ranking is a rank-tracking vendor and chose its own keyword set, so the sample is not a random draw of all Google queries.

Sources

  1. 1.Google May 2026 core update analysis - SE Ranking, June 5, 2026Primary
  2. 2.Reddit Tops Search Results Across All Niches After May Core Update - Search Engine Journal, June 9, 2026

About the author

Adam Hafez
Adam Hafez

Founder

Founder, UpgradIQ, Inc.

Adam Hafez works on technical SEO and search measurement: how pages get crawled, indexed, ranked and now quoted by answer engines. He founded UpgradIQ, which reads Google Search Console and GA4 to tie ranking movement back to the changes that caused it. He publishes what the data supports and states the limits of it.

  • Technical SEO
  • Search Console and GA4 measurement
  • Answer engine optimization
  • Structured data

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