The news: YouTube overtook Reddit as the most frequently cited social platform in AI-generated answers, reflecting how large language models increasingly favor machine-readable, explanatory content over engagement-driven signals.
- YouTube appearing in 16% of LLM responses over the past six months, compared with 10% for Reddit according to data cited by Adweek from Bluefish, reversing earlier patterns.
- AI visibility startup Emberos found that over the last six months, YouTube cited roughly 40% more often than Reddit across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, driven by structured metadata, transcripts, and explanatory formats.
- Answer engine optimization platform Goodie AI’s analysis of 6.1 million citations shows YouTube’s share of social citations doubling from 18.9% in August to 39.2% in December, while Reddit’s share fell from 44.2% to 20.3%.
- Profound’s analysis highlights YouTube’s scale advantage, with roughly 18 times more AI citations than Instagram, nearly 50 times more than TikTok, and over 500 times more than Vimeo.