Reddit Says AI Mode Sends No Traffic
Welcome to Episode 79 of The GEO Show, the weekly briefing on Generative Engine Optimization and AI search.
In this episode, Paris Childress, founder of Hop AI and co-founder of GEOforge, covers seven stories plus a lightning round.
In this episode:
- 📉 Reddit says AI Mode sends no traffic. Google Search referrals fell by more than a million a week in October. Reddit will test a logged-in only experience in some non-US markets.
- 🤖 One opt-out for AI training. Google and Microsoft will honor a shared robots.txt token that blocks AI training across vendors, and OpenAI plans to follow. It covers training only, not crawling or search eligibility.
- ⚖️ Publishers put a number on AI retrieval. Digital Context Next told the court member unique visitors fell 26% from 2023 to 2025 and quoted Microsoft's "doom loop" warning.
- 🛒 AI agents at checkout. Microsoft Clarity found checkout in about 25% of agent sessions versus 15% for humans.
- 🔍 A 0.9% AI click-through estimate. Cyrus Shepard opted one site out of AI Overviews and AI Mode and still lost clicks.
- 📢 ChatGPT ads grow. Wider desktop cards, multi-image ads for everyone, and creative enhancements on by default.
- ✈️ Travel answers favor booking sites. BrightEdge found booking platforms in 38% of booking-stage answers.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/L8xNSUSfUD8
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💬 Question: If AI's favorite citation source says AI Mode sends no traffic, what should everyone else expect?
