What Reddit's May Core Update Gains Mean for SEO

An SE Ranking analysis of 100,000 keywords found Reddit grew its top 3 presence in all 20 niches tracked after the May core update. For transparency, SE Ranking sells rank tracking and AI visibility tools, and the data comes from its own keyword monitoring platform.

Data suggests Reddit grew most in niches where people look for personal experience. Here's a closer look at the data broken down by category.

Reddit's Niche Level Gains

Reddit's overall top 3 share rose to 10.24% after May, up from 8.56% after March and 9.19% after December. That's about one in every ten top 3 spots in their data. Reddit also took the #1 spot more often.

It held the top result for 13,872 keywords after May, up 54% from 8,993 after March. The biggest gains came in experience led niches, including: Pets: +3.18 points (14.87% → 18.05%) Education: +3.03 points (10.46% → 13.49%) Sports and Exercise: +3.02 points (9.75% → 12.77%) E-Commerce and Retail: +2.61 points (11.50% → 14.11%) Healthcare: +0.40 points (0.93% → 1.33%) Real Estate: +0.06 points (3.67% → 3.73%) News and Politics: +0.78 points (2.75% → 3.53%) That contrasts with what happened after the March core update, where Amsive found Reddit and similar UGC sites lost US search visibility while brand sites gained. SE Ranking's March data showed Reddit's top 3 share declining from its December level, but moved back the other way in May data. A useful companion note is WordPress and Astro Versus Everyone Else, because it looks at a nearby part of the same system.

The useful interpretation is that platform visibility is becoming more uneven. When a forum, community, or video surface wins more often, the content plan has to account for where the user now expects the answer to live, not only which owned page should rank.

YouTube's Regular Organic Presence Fell

YouTube's top 3 organic share dropped to 2.14% after May, down from 2.50% after March and 2.40% after December. Data indicates that YouTube results may be appearing more often in video SERP features and less often in regular organic positions. The analysis covers organic blue links only, so any YouTube presence in video carousels or other features isn't counted.

Top 3 monopolies, where one domain holds all three top spots for a keyword, dropped to 1.99% of keywords after May, down from 3.24% after March. YouTube is still the domain most likely to hold a monopoly, but its share of those keywords dropped from 15.5% after March to 15.4% after May.

Volatility & Recovery Data

For overall volatility, SE Ranking found May landed between March and December. After May, 76.03% of top 3 URLs changed position and 88.39% of top 10 URLs changed. Both figures were lower than March but higher than December.

About one in five top 10 pages (19.87%) disappeared from the top 100. That's lower than the 24.10% that dropped out after March but higher than December's 14.70%. Only 32.20% of domains that lost their top 10 positions after March made it back into the top 10 after May.

What The Analysis Doesn't Show

SE Ranking's data covers organic blue links for 100,000 keywords tracked from one US location (New York). The company has used the same keyword set across three core updates. That makes cross update comparisons more consistent than a one off analysis, though other regions or keyword sets could look different.

The figures also don't capture SERP features, so the real picture is probably bigger than these numbers show, especially for YouTube. In SE Ranking's dataset, the "March" comparison combines the March spam update and core update, which rolled out within days of each other. SE Ranking's data can't separate which update caused which changes in that window.

What changes for search teams

The niche level breakdown is what tells the story here. Hearing "Reddit is growing in SERPs" doesn't register the same if you work in healthcare, where Reddit's top 3 share went from 0.93% to 1.33%. But it matters a lot if you work in pets, where Reddit now holds 18% of the top 3 positions.

The recovery figures are also telling. Two thirds of domains that dropped in March didn't come back in May. For sites still recovering, data shows another core update doesn't guarantee a rebound.

What to watch next

The comparison after the next core update, whenever that hits, will help us see if the gap between YMYL and experience led niches stays consistent.

What community gains reveal about intent

The niche level breakdown is what tells the story here. Hearing "Reddit is growing in SERPs" doesn't register the same if you work in healthcare, where Reddit's top 3 share went from 0.93% to 1.33%. The point matters because it changes how the topic should be inspected, measured, and connected to the rest of the search system.

The lesson is to avoid over weighting a domain naming choice when the stronger signals sit elsewhere. Crawlability, relevance, page quality, internal links, brand recognition, and useful content usually explain more of the outcome than whether the domain contains a separator.

What community gains reveal about intent

Reddit's overall top 3 share rose to 10.24% after May, up from 8.56% after March and 9.19% after December. That's about one in every ten top 3 spots in their data. The point matters because it changes how the topic should be inspected, measured, and connected to the rest of the search system.

The useful interpretation is that platform visibility is becoming more uneven. When a forum, community, or video surface wins more often, the content plan has to account for where the user now expects the answer to live, not only which owned page should rank.

The response is not to copy forum content. It is to understand why forum pages satisfy the query: lived experience, specificity, freshness, disagreement, and practical language. Owned content needs more of that evidence if it wants to compete where community pages are now stronger.

Why owned content needs experience signals

YouTube's top 3 organic share dropped to 2.14% after May, down from 2.50% after March and 2.40% after December. Data indicates that YouTube results may be appearing more often in video SERP features and less often in regular organic positions. The point matters because it changes how the topic should be inspected, measured, and connected to the rest of the search system.

The useful interpretation is that platform visibility is becoming more uneven. When a forum, community, or video surface wins more often, the content plan has to account for where the user now expects the answer to live, not only which owned page should rank.

The lesson is to avoid over weighting a domain naming choice when the stronger signals sit elsewhere. Crawlability, relevance, page quality, internal links, brand recognition, and useful content usually explain more of the outcome than whether the domain contains a separator.