It seems like the moderators of most of the subreddits the account posted to realized that this is a parasite account and deleted the comments. The only non-deleted comment also reads like it was written by AI.
So, while I can’t explicitly prove that the original commenter and the top responder are in fact the same person, what is clear, is that the latter is not looking to use Reddit as a way to connect with fellow humans. It was created for one sole purpose: to redirect traffic to affiliate links or to external sites with affiliate links.
Having said that, even if the top responder is just some Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone, you don’t have to look very far to find proof that collusion between accounts is happening.
The grassy knoll Redditor 👀
Looking at the original drone thread, all you have to do is go one comment down from the top responder to find evidence of a multi-account conspiracy. That account also left a link. On the surface, it’s a link to another subreddit thread:
However, click through to that subreddit thread and you’ll find a comment loaded with links that all lead to the same drone affiliate site. You’ll also notice that the referring user and the account posting the links to the drone affiliate site are not the same:
Do I know whether this is one person using two separate accounts or two separate people working together using their own accounts?
No, I do not know. But does it matter at the end of the day?
The point stands: these are not authentic accounts interested in making Reddit “the most human place on Earth.”
How prevalent is parasite SEO on Reddit? 🦠
If your next thought is, “big deal, this was just one example with drones, how do I know this is happening at scale?”
That’s a fair question to ask. The simple answer is: you don’t.
The people who do this aren’t exactly filing quarterly reports. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t make some educated guesses.
First, it’s important to note that opportunistic individuals were already using creative SEO tactics even prior to the hidden gems update and the Google deal. For example, the individual below used a direct match keyword strategy to hijack the :
So while it’s tricky to get exact numbers on parasite SEO, it’s not unreasonable to assume that Reddit’s explosive growth over the past year hasn’t attracted more of this kind of behavior.
Even if we assume that the level of activity remained at a constant ratio of parasite SEO activity to genuine posting then there would still be an overall net increase. This is due to both the rise in organic traffic (mentioned earlier) and the increased number of keywords Reddit began ranking for:
- Between the spring 2023 and summer of 2024, Reddit saw a 207% increase in total ranking keywords in the US, adding 110 million new keywords to its arsenal. 6
- For page one queries, the site experienced a 322% increase over the same period. 7
- And in those coveted top three positions? A 266% boost, netting Reddit an additional 7.2 million keywords. 8
Do you think all of that increased visibility was shrugged off by clever SEO professionals…or do you think they took advantage of it? You tell me.
Why Reddit SEO manipulation is here to stay 📈
Unfortunately, the problems I outlined here won’t be meaningfully addressed anytime soon – if ever. For a website who’s very foundation was built on hundreds of fake profiles, perhaps it’s just par for the course. And if you were hoping that something was going to happen as a result of Google’s recent manual strike against other parasite SEO abusers, you can keep hoping.
There are two main reasons for why change might not come soon:
- Addressing the issue in a meaningful way is not practically feasible.
- There are no real alternative options for Google.
Regarding the first point, unlike the sites Google took action against, Reddit is a lot more decentralized.
With Forbes, CNN, Fortune, etc, there are content teams that can be identified as intentionally using a parasite SEO strategy to abuse Google rankings. It’s easy to point the finger and say “Hey, you, we see what you’re doing and we’re going to punish you for it.”
On Reddit, you have over 100,000 active subreddits with thousands of individual moderators who are not actual Reddit employees. On top of that you have more than one billion individual users.
Who among them is using parasite SEO tactics?
It’s not identifiable in the same way that you can identify an editorial team behind a specific website.
If Google was to take some kind of action, it would have to manually punish individual subreddits. But making those assessments would require way too much manpower.
The other option would be to reverse the hidden gems update – or at least the part that bumped the search traffic of forum websites. That’s unlikely to happen though because no viable alternative for surfacing “organic human content” exists.
The reality is that whenever Google starts favoring something – whether it’s particular types of websites or SEO methods – opportunists jump on it. This means we’re stuck with both Reddit and Google being the way they are. It’s also probably why Google has been steadily losing market share because users are simply looking for better alternatives.
What do you think about this whole Reddit situation? Do you see it being resolved? Did I miss something? Let’s talk about it in the comments.
