Many people add “reddit” when they search on Google and other web search engines to get relevant results from a giant site for news gathering and discussion. However, there is a better way to search on and off Reddit.
Why you should search Reddit
If you are a long-time Reddit user or simply someone who lurks and finds the content on the page useful, you are already familiar with the reason why someone could search Reddit.
If you are less familiar with this site, you may be a little confused as to why people include Reddit in their search queries.
The answer is, in general, that Reddit is essentially a fusion of a wide range of Internet resources. It’s like a combination of social media and BBS / Usenet / forum discussions that were prevalent in the early days of the internet (except they were all merged together into one mega directory). It is an absolutely massive platform that includes a discussion focused on everything from the latest news to incredible hobbies.
Don’t get us wrong: there is a lot of stupid (and even horrible / unacceptable) content on Reddit, but there is also a huge amount of useful content generated by users.
From figuring out which plants are growing in your new home’s flowerbeds to discovering what the vague error code your 3D printer means, there’s a good chance you can use Reddit to do so.
In fact, the habit of relying on Reddit for organic people-driven responses has become so widespread that people have started adding their Google search results with the word “reddit” to help filter out regular Google search results.
It’s so widespread that, like Boeing Boeing editor Rob Beschizza pointed out, the search term “reddit” has even crept into Google search results “People also ask”. We were able to repeat the same result, which can be seen in the screenshot below.
Clearly, there are many people who search Reddit to get answers to their questions. So let’s take a look at how to search Reddit because digging through millions of subredits and billions of comments to get the information you actually want is crucial if you really want to find useful information.
We’ll first look at how to use the recently improved search on Reddit, and then we’ll look at how to use Google to go through all those billions of comments.
How to use Reddit’s on-site search more efficiently
Historically, however, searching for Reddit has been a bit of a hassle. The Reddit search engine on the spot was abyss. For years and years, it was so terrible that it was extremely useless and, more or less, it came down to simply searching the entire page as if you were scanning a massive text file using the find command.
If you were looking for something as simple as “stretching against back pain”, it was total bullshit whether you would get useful results from the subreddite of physical therapy or meaningless results from the subreddit of horror fiction.
In fact, it was so bad, if not the recent changes Reddit was introduced in April 2022 by updating the search algorithm and including features like comment search, we wouldn’t even bother with this section.
There are still many reasons to prefer a search engine like Google over the original Reddit search, but knowing how to use Reddit search increases your chances of finding useful information.
One of the primary benefits you get from a direct search on Reddit, for example, is the ability to sort search results by Reddit-based metrics such as how many comments there are, how many new ones, the number of votes (Reddit’s community-based approval system), and the possibility of easily limiting the time frame.
Although you can replicate some of these search customizations in a regular browser, you can’t replicate them all, and it’s much faster to use Reddit’s native interface to switch between them.
In addition to using GUI elements to change the way you sort results and the time frame you use, you can also use filters in the actual search box to quickly narrow your search scope.
Filters are available here. Each of them is used directly in the search box and without gaps between filters and parameters. Each entry below is an example, simply swap the text after the colon for any parameter you want to use. Put more words in quotes.
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author:GovSchwarzenegger– Filters by username. In this case, it will limit your search to only those made by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Reddit account. -
flair:Biology– Filters to “flair” subreddite. Flair is, in this context, something that is individually set up by subreddit moderators to help organize that subreddit. For example, / r / Science subreddit uses “biology”, and subreddit / r / BuildaPC has different styles like “Build Assistance”. This search parameter is only super useful if you are searching in a specific subreddit and want to filter only to display posts with that style. -
self:true– Filters to display only “standalone” posts (posts made by an individual, not posts made by sharing a link to an external source such as a news article). Useful if you want to filter discussions about articles, videos and the like, and focus on topics that they generate themselves. -
selftext:"GTX 3090"– Searches the body of your own posts. In this case, look for references to the GTX 3090 video card. Note that we put more search words in quotes. -
site:theatlantic.com– Search for submitted articles or content from a specific domain. Useful for location discussions about content from certain news sources or finding a post you forgot to save and can only remember general domains. -
subreddit:buildapchelp– Limits search results to a given subreddit. Useful when you have a good idea which subreddit has the information you are looking for, such as asking / r / buildapchelp for help with your PC project or / r / plantclinic if you need help diagnosing what is wrong with your houseplant. -
title:"white bugs"– Filters based on job title. If you have already filtered on / r / plantclinic, you could additionally filter on “white errors” in the title for more focused results. -
url:technology– This filter searches for a parameter within the URL of the submitted content. It is almost completely useless in itself, but when combined with a site filter, it allows you to access content from that page. I’m looking forsite:theatlantic.com url:technologyfor example, it returns articles just sent from The Atlantic and in the Technology subsection (because they are grouped under / technology /).
In addition to these search filters, you can use Boolean operators to turn search terms on or off. Reddit supports AND, OR and NO. You can group parts with parentheses.
- I – All words must appear in search results, such as “Intel I 3080 I Budget”.
- OR – Search results can include any term, such as “Intel I AMD”.
- NO – Search results include the first term, exclude the second term. Like “MSI NOT Zotac”
You can also combine the two, filters and Boolean operators, together. I’m looking for subreddit:buildapc title:(1080 AND 3080) for example, it will limit your search to / r / buildapc and only display posts that have both “1080” and “3080” in the title.
When these tools are useful, they are very useful. When you remember things about what you’re looking for or have a very good idea of where to look and what search terms to use, you have a solid chance of finding it.
But they’re not exactly up to the job of search engines for one purpose, so let’s take a look at using Google for better search results when throwing a wider network.
Get better Reddit search results with Google
However, instead of limiting yourself to putting reddit at the end of your Google search queries, you can use a few Google search tricks to essentially create a custom Reddit search engine powered by Google’s spooky Eye of Sauron capabilities.
Let’s start with the first search parameter you will need and build it from there. Instead of adding “reddit” to the end of your search, start by using the “site:” search tag to narrow it down to the reddit domain only. This works just like searching a site in the previous section on Reddit’s internal search.
So, whenever you use Google (or any other search engine with similar search tags) to search Reddit, you should start with:
site:reddit.com [your search terms here]
Just switching to a search with Google gives you an instant algorithmic boost and you may be satisfied with the search results right from the door.
However, if you haven’t, you can easily use all the common Google search parameters and tricks to narrow your search.
Logical operators such as AND and OR, as we mentioned in the previous section, work. To turn off something like using NO, use a dash instead. So, to seek MSI, not Zotac, seek
site:reddit.com MSI -Zotac
Although Google search is generally superior to Reddit’s original search, however, there are a few areas where it fails. A few of the tools built into Reddit’s original search simply don’t have equivalents you can use when searching with Google.
For example, search flags on Reddit like author: , self: , selftext: , and so on do not have any kind of Google equivalent nor can you set a specific search trick to your liking to replicate them. For example, you can’t recreate an author-based search on Google by, say, changing “reddit.com” to “reddit.com/user/theirusername” in your search query because user pages aren’t indexed by Google. (You can still search by username, but it’s not quite the same).
You can, however, recreate subreddit: parameter by limiting to the subreddit URL. For example, if you searched for information about game monitors and came across / r / buildapcmonitors subreddit, a sub dedicated solely to tracking recommendations, you may want to limit your search. You can do this by simply adding a site entry: like this:
site:reddit.com/r/buildapcmonitors best 4k gaming monitor
This would limit your query about “best 4k game monitor” to just that subreddit.
In general, we recommend that you start broadly with your own site:reddit.com search and analyze only if you find that the results are not focused enough. Usually the highest level results, without additional settings or quite useful.
Limiting your search to certain subreddites and / or using date filters to limit results to the last 6-12 months, however, can be useful when looking for things related to current events or computer hardware where you want the most up-to-date information.
If you don’t make any changes to your Reddit’s search habits other than switching from plain old “reddit” to site:reddit.com you will be in good shape. The popularity of Reddit not only means that there is a lot of content that Reddit actually hosts to analyze, but there are tons of non-Reddit sites that also mention Reddit (in fact, just like the article you are currently reading). Limiting only to Reddit.com results is an instant search boost.
As for when to use the original Reddit search via Google search or vice versa? If you are already a Reddit user and familiar with Reddit conventions, then using Reddit search to find very specific things can be very helpful. But for the vast majority of people who just want to leverage the vast knowledge base of Reddit users, allowing Google’s algorithmic magic data combing is the right path for you.