Reddit says Google's AI Mode does not drive traffic, after its Google Search referrals fell by more than a million a week in October 2026. Paris Childress explains what that means for GEO when AI's favorite citation source plans a login-only test, then covers a shared AI training opt-out, publisher losses, AI agents at checkout and ChatGPT ads.
Reddit, one of the most cited domains in AI answers, says Google's AI Mode does not drive traffic. Its Google Search referrals fell by more than a million a week on average in October 2026, and it plans to test a logged-in only experience in some non-US markets. If AI's favorite citation source gets no clicks from AI Mode, every brand should rethink what AI visibility is worth and where AI systems will look for real user opinions next.
Paris Childress covers that warning alongside a new shared AI training opt-out, a publisher group's traffic numbers filed in court, Microsoft Clarity data on AI agents at checkout, a 0.9% click-through estimate for AI Overviews and AI Mode, bigger ChatGPT ads and BrightEdge travel data.
According to Reddit, no. In its Q3 results, Reddit said Google Search referrals fell by more than a million a week on average in October, and CEO Steve Huffman blamed mainly AI Overviews and AI Mode. US logged-out daily active uniques fell from about 30 million to 27 million between Q2 and Q3, while logged-in users rose slightly from 23.1 to 23.4 million. Revenue still grew 53% year over year to $895 million.
"If AI's favorite citation source, Reddit, says that AI mode sends no traffic, then what should everyone else expect?" Paris Childress
Reddit's planned login-only test matters for GEO because logged-out users and crawlers may see less of it. Paris's advice is not to over-index on Reddit for GEO, and to watch whether Reddit gets cited less in the test markets.
For most brands, no. Google and Microsoft said they will honor a shared robots.txt token that tells several AI providers at once not to train on a site, and OpenAI plans to follow in the coming months. It covers training only. It does not block crawling or change search eligibility, and it takes effect in early Q1 2027.
Digital Context Next, whose members include The New York Times, told the court in the OpenAI copyright case that member unique visitors fell 26% from 2023 to 2025, views fell 18% and visits 16%. A July 2026 snapshot found a median 22% drop in referred traffic. The brief quotes an internal Microsoft document warning of a "doom loop" for the web. Paris notes that the same years brought Google updates, falling social traffic and zero-click results, so not all of the 26% is AI. Brands should separate AI-driven losses from classic search changes in their own data.
Yes, according to Microsoft Clarity. Across more than 5.2 million sessions classified as AI agent traffic, checkout appeared in about 25% of agent sessions versus about 15% of human ones, and agents clicked outbound links about half as often. Agent sessions grew 88% in three weeks. The caveats: one source, no detection method disclosed, and possible human takeovers mid-session. The practical step is to segment agent traffic in analytics and make sure checkout and forms work without human-only steps.
One site test suggests about 0.9%. Cyrus Shepard used Google's opt-out to remove a site from AI Overviews and AI Mode and compared clicks before and after. AI impressions were about 8% of the total, and regular organic clicks also fell after opting out. Paris reads this as evidence that AI visibility is more about influence than traffic, and does not advise opting out. Anyone testing it should use part of a site and keep a control.
The episode closes with a lightning round on Discord's public server pages with AI summaries and Gemini's in-chat file editing.
Hi, everybody. Welcome to The GEO Show. It's Monday, 2nd of November, and we've got some great stories to go through today. The theme is gonna be that Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI will honor one shared AI training opt-out, while Reddit and publishers put numbers on AI search traffic losses. All right, let's get into the first big story today.
Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI back one shared robots.txt line for AI training opt-out. On Friday, Google and Microsoft said they will honor a shared robots.txt token, which is usage_AI-training, that tells several AI providers at once not to train on a site. OpenAI says it plans to honor it in the next few months.
It covers training only. It doesn't block crawling, and it doesn't change eligibility for search results. All right. This is a really important story. we've been talking a whole lot about training versus search and the importance of allowing your site to be crawled. This is really the first no training switch that works across all vendors, so this would make everyone's lives a lot easier.
For brands, training and grounding are now separate decisions, and so far only Microsoft offers a grounding control. This is set to take effect in early Q1 twenty twenty-seven, so it's important to decide training and grounding separately and don't copy a blanket publisher-style block onto a brand site.
My advice though here for most websites is that blocking training bots could weaken how well models know your brand over time. And I see very few reasons other than large publishers that do not wanna have their content scraped and synthesized into results as an alternative to getting traffic. I think that makes sense for them.
But for 99% of websites that represent businesses that are not monetizing through publishing, I would say let all the bots come, including the training bots, because the more the training bots can crawl and ingest the content from your website, the better they will know your brand, represent your brand, and recommend your brand appropriately in AI search.
On to the next story. Reddit says AI mode does not drive traffic. It loses over one million weekly search referrals, and it plans a login-only test. In its Q3 results, Reddit said Google Search referrals fell by more than a million a week on average in October. CEO Steve Huffman blamed mainly AI Overviews and AI mode and said AI mode does not drive traffic.
Reddit will test a logged-in only experience in some non-US markets this quarter. Some more details here from Search Engine Journal. If October's pace holds, Reddit's daily active uniques could fall in Q4 by a low double-digit percentage from about one hundred and thirty million. US logged out daily active uniques fell from thirty million to twenty-seven million between Q2 and Q3, while US logged in rose from twenty-three point one to twenty-three point four million, and revenue was eight hundred and ninety-five million, which is up fifty-three percent year over year.
Huffman said that Google is crawling us as hard as ever, and Reddit expects the login-only change to trade reach for engagement. Also, an executive from Reddit said that they are pretty skeptical of GEO.
All right. Well, Reddit is one of the most cited domains in AI answers and if logged out users and crawlers see less of it then AI systems may start to lean more on different sources for real user opinions.
So the reality check here is that if AI's favorite citation source, Reddit, says that AI mode sends no traffic, then what should everyone else expect?
So it will be important as Reddit tests this logged-in only experience in a few non-US markets to watch whether Reddit starts to get cited less in these markets. And my general feeling here is that it's not a good strategy to over-index on Reddit for GEO because I think it's gonna continue to decline over time. All right, next story.
Publisher group tells a court that AI retrieval cut member visitors 26%, and it quotes Microsoft's doom loop. Digital Context Next, whose members include The New York Times, filed a proposed amicus brief in the OpenAI copyright case. It says that unique visitors to member sites fell 26% from 2023 to 2025, and it quotes an internal Microsoft document warning of a doom loop for the web. Here are the numbers.
From twenty twenty-three to twenty twenty-five, unique visitors fell by twenty-six percent, views fell by eighteen percent, and visits by sixteen percent. A July twenty twenty-six snapshot found a median twenty-two percent drop in referred traffic. So now the fight over fair use centers on retrieval and AI answers, not just training, and that is the layer that GEO depends on.
It's interesting to think here what will happen to AI citations if a court rules that retrieval isn't fair use? And to put it in broader context, over these same years, publishers also faced Google updates, falling social traffic, and now zero-click results. So the twenty-six percent isn't all AI. So it is important here to separate how much of your own traffic loss comes from AI features versus classic search changes.
Next up, from Microsoft Clarity, AI agents reach checkout in twenty-five percent of sessions versus fifteen percent for humans. Microsoft Clarity analyzed more than five point two million sessions it classified as AI agent traffic. Checkout showed up in about a quarter of agent sessions versus about fifteen percent of human ones.
Agents clicked outbound links about half as often as humans. This is data from the 13th of August to the 9th of September across two hundred and thirty thousand Clarity projects, and the agents came from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic ecosystems. Microsoft here says that agent sessions grew eighty-eight percent in three weeks.
So a few caveats here. One source and Microsoft's own post wasn't open, and it didn't say how agents were detected. Second, agent sessions may include a human taking over part way, and PPC Land's math says the published counts imply about one point two two million sessions, not five point two million.
In any case, this is an early large-scale look at what agents do on websites. Pages where people transact need to work for software as well as people. So it begs the question, are agents better shoppers or are they sent in once the decision is already made? The counterargument is that people mostly hand agents tasks that already end at checkout, which makes this comparison skewed.
But the practical advice here is to separate agent traffic in your analytics and check that checkout and forms work without human-only steps. Next story. One site test estimates that a 0.9% click-through rate on AI overview/AI mode impressions. Cyrus Shepard used Google's opt-out to pull one site out of AI overviews and AI mode, then compared clicks before and after.
He estimates the AI impressions had about a 0.9% click-through rate. AI impressions were about 8% of the site's total, and regular organic clicks also fell after the opt-out So this is using Google's own opt-out as a natural experiment, and opting out does cost clicks So under 1% CTR, yet it still is costing clicks.
So is AI visibility more about influence or traffic? I think it's more about influence here. I would not advise that you opt out based on this, and if you do test it, use part of the site only and keep a control. Next up, ChatGPT ads add a wider desktop card. They open multi-image ads to all and switch on auto rewrites.
OpenAI told advertisers it's rolling out a wider ad card on desktop and opening multi-image ads to everyone. Since October 30th, creative enhancements are on by default, which means that ChatGPT can rewrite, translate, and redirect ads. So the wider card does not need any advertiser action, and the Shopify integration now works outside the US.
Multi-image ads use four to six square images, and Learn More is the only button option. Creative enhancements can rewrite text, translate it, resize images, and change destination URLs. Advertisers can opt out per account or per campaign.
So bigger, more automated ads now take up more of the answer space where organic citations appear, which probably would reduce even further the attention and click-through rate for those organic citations. ChatGPT seems to be following Google's ad playbook here, just faster.
Though wider ad units might make it clearer what's an ad and what's the answer And as I've advised before on this topic, advertisers in ChatGPT ads should check their opt-out settings and confirm UTMs survive URL changes. Next story from BrightEdge. Booking platforms show up more in AI answers as travel intent rises.
BrightEdge tracked US holiday travel prompts in Google's AI Overviews and in ChatGPT. Booking platforms appeared in 12% of inspiration answers, 25% of comparison answers, and 38% of booking answers They also appeared in 78% of budget-related AI overview answers. Here are some more details. Hilton leads in AI overviews with 28.3%.
Marriott leads in ChatGPT with 29%. Expedia's lead over Kayak is two point two X in AI overviews and one point four X in ChatGPT. Only 9% of tracked prompts showed booking intent All right. Well, it's no surprise here that these booking websites are starting to gain more and more share as we approach the holidays, and there are more people researching with intent to make travel bookings.
I think it's really important, as always, to group your tracked prompts by their funnel stages. And of course, smaller brands here, I think, have more room on the earlier stage prompts, whereas the bottom-of-funnel prompts, especially when it relates to travel, it's most likely gonna continue to be dominated by these large booking sites. All right, let's wrap up with a couple of lightning round stories.
First, Discord. Discord's public servers get their own webpages with AI channel summaries from November 16th. Some public messages may appear in web search from mid-December without usernames. It's off by default in the EU, UK, and several other markets. And next, Gemini file editor. Gemini can now preview and edit PDFs, docs, sheets, and slides it creates right in the chat.
All right, that's a wrap for this episode. Thank you all for tuning in, and we'll see you on the next one.
