An SE ranking analysis out of 100,000 keywords found, Reddit increased its presence in the top 3 in the 20 niches tracked after the May Core Update.
For the sake of transparency, SE Ranking sells rank tracking and AI visibility tools, and the data comes from its own keyword monitoring platform.
Data suggests that Reddit has grown primarily in niches where people are looking for a personal experience. Here’s a closer look at the data broken down by category.
Reddit Niche-Level Earnings
Reddit’s overall top 3 share increased to 10.24% after May, compared to 8.56% after March and 9.19% after December. That’s about one in ten places in the top three in their data.
Reddit also took the top spot more often. It had the top result for 13,872 keywords after May, up 54% from 8,993 after March.
The biggest gains were seen in experience-driven niches, including:
- Animals: +3.18 points (14.87% → 18.05%)
- Education: +3.03 points (10.46% → 13.49%)
- Sports and physical exercise: +3.02 points (9.75% → 12.77%)
- E-Commerce and Distribution: +2.61 points (11.50% → 14.11%)
The EDGE niches have barely moved:
- Health: +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%)
This contrasts with what happened after the March main update, where Amsif found that Reddit and similar UGC sites were losing visibility in US searches while branded sites were gaining.
March data from SE Ranking showed that the share of Reddit’s top 3 shares was down from its December level, but fell in the other direction in May data.
YouTube’s regular organic presence has dropped
The organic share of YouTube’s top 3 fell to 2.14% after May, compared to 2.50% after March and 2.40% after December.
Data indicates that YouTube results may appear more often in SERP video features and less often in regular organic positions. The analysis only covers organic blue links, so any YouTube presence in video carousels or other features is not taken into account.
The top three monopolies, in which one domain holds the top three spots for a keyword, fell to 1.99% of keywords after May, compared to 3.24% after March. YouTube remains the domain most likely to have a monopoly, but its share of these keywords increased from 15.5% after March to 15.4% after May.
Volatility and recovery data
For overall volatility, the SE rankings revealed that May fell between March and December. After May, 76.03% of the top 3 URLs changed position and 88.39% of the 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 the 14.70% in December.
Only 32.20% of domains that lost their top 10 after March returned to the top 10 after May. The remaining 67.80% have still not returned. At the same time, 17% of domains currently in the top 10 are new and do not appear in any of the three SE Ranking snapshots.
What the analysis doesn’t show
SE Ranking data covers organic blue links per 100,000 keywords tracked from a location in the United States (New York). The company used the same keyword defined in three major updates. This makes cross-update comparisons more consistent than a one-off analysis, even though other regions or keyword sets may be different.
The numbers also don’t reflect SERP features, so the reality is probably bigger than what these numbers show, especially for YouTube.
In the SE Ranking dataset, the “March” comparison combines the March spam update and the core update, deployed within a few days of each other. SE Ranking data cannot separate which update caused which changes in this window.
Why it matters
The niche breakdown is what tells the story here. Hearing “Reddit is growing in the SERPs” doesn’t mean the same thing if you work in healthcare, where Reddit’s top 3 share increased from 0.93% to 1.33%. But it matters a lot if you’re in the pet industry, where Reddit now holds 18% of the top 3 positions.
The recovery figures are also revealing. Two-thirds of domains abandoned in March did not return in May. For sites still recovering, the data shows that another core update does not guarantee a rebound.
Looking to the future
Comparing after the next major update, whenever it arrives, will help us see if the gap between YMYL and experience-based niches remains consistent.
Featured image: frank333/Shutterstock
