Add another name to Google’sGOOG

hit list — RedditRDDT

. The social platform has become the latest victim of the search giant’s algorithm changes, which sent traffic into a tailspin and caused Reddit to miss Wall Street’s active user targets — tumblingRDDT

up to ~18% Thursday.

• “This [algorithm change] was particularly interesting because there really was a swing down,” said CEO Steve Huffman — spotlighting a dependency on Google Search, which provides two-thirds of its website traffic.
• The stifled web visibility caused Reddit’s 101.7M daily active users to fall short of Wall Street’s 103.1M target — despite beating earnings, guidance, and revenue estimates amid a stellar 71% year-over-year sales surge.

Who’s counterattacking who? The tumble comes as Reddit gears up to challenge Google’s dominance by developing its own AI-powered search engine. CEO Huffman described plans to leverage 20 years of user-generated content to answer niche queries directly on Reddit — transforming its massive conversation archive into a searchable goldmine. However, challenging Google’s position as the go-to answer destination may feel like biting the hand that feeds it — call it a search for trouble.