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Reddit Guides Below Estimates as Google Traffic Slides

Reddit beat third-quarter revenue and profit expectations, but its fourth-quarter revenue forecast fell short of Wall Street's and management says Google search referrals are falling fast. Its answer is a login requirement, which does not bring that traffic back.

Reddit (NYSE: RDDT), the operator of topic-based discussion communities, forecast fourth-quarter revenue below analysts’ estimates yesterday and warned that Google search referrals are falling fast. Shares fell sharply in after-hours trading after the results came out following the US close.

Reddit closed yesterday at $129.60, down 3.79% from $134.70, before the release. That was its lowest close in three months and 27.7% below the $179.23 high of the 27th of July. US trading opens at 2.30pm UK time today.

RDDT.US

Third-quarter revenue rose 53% to $895m, net income was $283m and diluted earnings per share were $1.40, against $0.80 a year earlier. The problem was the outlook: fourth-quarter revenue guidance of $1,000m to $1,030m has a midpoint of $1,015m, about 3.3% below the $1.05bn average analyst estimate compiled by Bloomberg.

Global daily users, at 130.3m, also missed the 133.5m analyst average. Google, long Reddit’s main source of new visitors, is the pressure point. Referrals from its search results fell by more than 1 million a week on average in October, and Chief Executive Steve Huffman said total daily users could fall by a low double-digit percentage in the fourth quarter if the trend continues.

Logged-out visitors are the group search feeds. They made up 76.8m of the 130.3m daily users, about 59% on our calculation, and US logged-out users fell 4% to 27.3m.

Line chart of Reddit share price from late July to 29 October 2026 showing a slide to a three-month low before results
Reddit shares closed at a three-month low of $129.60 before the results were released after the US close on the 29th of October.

Reddit’s response is to test a primarily logged-in experience in select markets outside the US in the fourth quarter. Asked about it by Deutsche Bank on the earnings call, Huffman said:

we will likely be trading reach for engagement

Steve Huffman, Reddit

Chief Operating Officer Jennifer Wong said on the call that over 80% of monetisation already comes from logged-in and app users.

That suggests the plan protects the audience Reddit keeps rather than recovering lost traffic. Huffman said Reddit makes no assumption that Google sends traffic back, and he conceded the conversion rates are unknown. Whether the shrinking audience outweighs better monetisation is what the shares must now price.

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