An SE Ranking analysis of 100,000 keywords found Reddit increased its top 3 presence in all 20 locations tracked after the May update.
To be clear, SE Ranking sells rank tracking and AI visibility tools, and the data comes from its keyword monitoring site.
The data suggests that Reddit has grown the most in areas where people are looking for personal information. Here’s a closer look at the data broken down by category.
Reddit Niche-Level Benefits
Reddit’s top 3 shares collectively rose to 10.24% after May, up from 8.56% after March and 9.19% after December. That’s about one of the top 3 positions in their data.
Reddit has also taken the #1 spot multiple times. It held the top result of 13,872 keywords after May, up 54% from 8,993 after March.
The biggest gains came in experience-led niches, including:
- Pets: +3.18 points (14.87% → 18.05%)
- Education: +3.03 points (10.46% → 13.49%)
- Sports and Exercise: +3.02 points (9.75% → 12.77%)
- IE-Commerce and Retail: +2.61 points (11.50% → 14.11%)
Slow moving YMYL niches:
- Health care: +0.40 points (0.93% → 1.33%)
- Real Estate: +0.06 points (3.67% → 3.73%)
- News and Politics: +0.78 points (2.75% → 3.53%)
That’s in contrast to what happened after the main update in March, when Amsive found Reddit and similar UGC sites lost visibility in US searches while product sites gained.
March’s SE Ranking data showed that Reddit’s top 3 share fell from its December level, but bounced back in the opposite direction with May’s data.
YouTube’s General Presence Has Declined
Top 3 YouTube shares fell to 2.14% after May, down from 2.50% after March and 2.40% after December.
The data shows that YouTube results are likely to appear more often in video SERPs and less often in general areas. The analysis includes live green links only, so any YouTube presence in video carousels or other features is not counted.
Top 3 monopolies, where one domain holds all three top positions for a keyword, dropped to 1.99% of keywords after May, down from 3.24% after March. YouTube is still the most likely monopoly, but its share of those keywords dropped from 15.5% after March to 15.4% after May.
Volatility & Recovery Data
In total volatility, the SE Ranking was obtained in May and remained between March and December. After May, 76.03% of the top 3 URLs changed position and 88.39% of the top 10 URLs changed. Both figures were lower than March but higher than December.
About one in five of the top 10 pages (19.87%) disappeared from the top 100. That’s less than the 24.10% it fell after March but more than December’s 14.70%.
Only 32.20% of the domains that lost their top 10 positions after March returned to the top 10 after May. Another 67.80% have not returned. At the same time, 17% of the domains currently in the top 10 are new, not showing up in any of the three SE Ranking summaries.
Not Showing Analysis
SE Ranking data includes blue organic links for 100,000 keywords tracked in one US location (New York). The company used the same keyword placed in all three key updates. That makes cross-update comparisons more consistent than single analysis, although some regions or keyword sets may look different.
Statistics also do not capture SERP factors, so the real picture is bigger than these numbers show, especially on YouTube.
In the SE Ranking dataset, the “March” comparison includes the spam March update and the main update, released within days of each other. SE Ranking data cannot distinguish which update caused the changes in that window.
Why This Matters
The niche level segmentation is what tells the story here. Hearing that “Reddit is growing in the SERPs” doesn’t register the same when you work in healthcare, where Reddit’s top share went from 0.93% to 1.33%. But it’s especially important if you work in pets, where Reddit now holds 18% of the top 3 positions.
Recovery statistics are also telling. Two-thirds of the domains that went down in March did not come back in May. For sites that are still recovering, the data shows another major update doesn’t guarantee recovery.
Looking Forward
A comparison after the next major update, whenever that attacks, will help us see if the gap between YMYL and experience-led niches remains the same.
Featured image: frank333/Shutterstock
