How to Find the Reddit Threads Google and ChatGPT Already Use

Search Google for the questions your buyers ask and note the Reddit threads on page one. Then ask the same questions in 3 or 4 AI assistants, 3 times each, and keep the threads that come back, because one answer proves little. In Ahrefs' 20-day study of 5 AI tools (Oct 29, 2026), at least half of the sites cited one day were gone the next¹.

ChatGPT has been the stingiest of them since August 2026. In Ahrefs' Brand Radar data, about 1 in 5 US ChatGPT answers cited Reddit in March and about 1 in 43 by late September². In Otterly.AI's mid-August data, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini and Perplexity kept citing the threads ChatGPT dropped³, so a ChatGPT-only check undercounts. The full timeline is in what changed in ChatGPT's Reddit citations.

Why these threads keep getting read

A thread that ranks on Google is read by everyone who searches that question, for as long as it holds the spot. A thread an AI assistant cites gets pulled into answers for people who never open Reddit at all. The two lists overlap, but they aren't the same list.

Ahrefs followed about 37,500 cited sites across 5 AI tools for 20 days and compared them with Google rankings¹. The figures cover every kind of page, Reddit threads included, and Ahrefs calls them correlations. They still make the case for running both checks: Google's results catch part of what the assistants read, never all of it.

Finding the threads is the step both kinds of work share. What you then say in a thread follows how to market on Reddit without getting banned, and the wider job of getting named by assistants is in how to get your brand recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.

Google: 3 searches per buyer question

Start from the questions a buyer types before they've heard of you: "best X for Y", "X vs Y", "X alternatives", "is X worth it" and "X review". For a mattress brand like Snoozly, that's "best mattress for back pain" and "CloudNest vs DreamCo", never "Snoozly". Then run each question 3 ways:

1. Search the plain question. A Reddit thread on page one here reaches buyers who weren't looking for Reddit. Check Google's Discussions and Forums block as well, a results feature built for forum threads⁵, and use the Web filter if you want links without the AI Overview on top⁶.
2. Search it again with "reddit" on the end, the way people search when they want Reddit's answer and nobody else's. A thread on page one here is read by exactly those people.
3. Search site:reddit.com plus the question. It lists Reddit's own pages for the query, ranked against each other, so it's a list of candidates, not a ranking. Google adds that the operator "doesn't necessarily return all the URLs that are indexed"⁴.

A thread counts as ranking when it's on page one of the first or second search. The top site: result can be missing from both. Note each thread's date as you go. Age doesn't stop a thread ranking, but it can stop you commenting, which the checks below sort out.

The builder below writes all 3 searches for 5 buyer questions, plus the same questions phrased for an AI assistant. Change the 4 fields to your category and copy them out.

AI assistants: ask, repeat, collect the sources

Ask each assistant the same buyer questions, without your brand name, since you're looking for the threads that shape answers for people who haven't heard of you yet. Then open the sources. Each assistant keeps them somewhere different.

Run each question 3 times, in a new chat each time, and count how often each thread appears. Citations churn fast. Ahrefs saw around 60% of ChatGPT and AI Mode citations gone by the next day¹, and in one tester's run in r/aeo, the same ChatGPT prompt asked 3 times within a minute cited 6, 0 and 5 Reddit threads¹³. A thread that turns up in 2 of 3 runs is a better bet than one that turned up once.

Same question, different sources

Some categories barely show Reddit in ChatGPT at all. One tester in r/aeo found no forum citations across 60 shopping questions, while a software question pulled Reddit threads in 2 of 3 runs¹⁴. If none of your runs cite a thread, the Google list is your list. If they cite YouTube reviews instead, here's how to comment under the videos AI answers cite.

Check a thread before you comment

A thread that ranks is only useful if you can still add something to it. Run 4 checks, in this order:

1. Can it take a comment? Archiving is a setting each subreddit turns on or off. When it's on, posts older than 6 months can't get new comments or votes¹¹, so a 2-year-old thread in a sub that doesn't archive is still open. A moderator can also lock any thread, after which only moderators can comment¹². Look for the comment box.
2. What do the subreddit's rules allow? Read the sidebar and the pinned posts for the self-promotion and link rules before you write a word. The Reddit marketing guide covers how much subs differ.
3. Is anyone still there? Sort the comments by New. A reply from last week means people still answer each other. Nothing new in a year means readers still arrive but nobody talks back, so write for the reader, not for a reply.
4. Is the question still open? If the top answer already says what you'd say, move on. A discontinued pick, an out-of-date price or an unanswered follow-up from the person who asked are the gaps a new comment can fill.

What to write once a thread passes is its own craft, covered in how to mention your product in a comment that stays up.

Thread passed all 4? Draft a comment for it with the free generator

Keep a short list and re-check it weekly

Log every thread in one sheet: the question that found it, its Google position in each search, which assistants cited it and in how many runs, its status and the date of the newest comment. Then count places. Page one of Google counts once, and each assistant that cited it at least once counts once more.

Keep the open threads with 2 or more places. Watch the ones with 1. Drop anything archived or locked, however well it ranks.

Re-run the searches and the questions every week. Rankings move, mods lock threads, and citations come and go. Ahrefs' advice for AI citations is to count how many of the last 7 days you were cited rather than trust a single check¹, and the same habit works for threads. If what you want to measure is whether answers name your brand, that's a different job, covered in how to track brand mentions in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.

Doing it every week without the spreadsheet

SlopMog runs both halves of this for you. Add your site and it pulls out your brand, what you sell and your keyword groups, then finds Reddit and YouTube threads for those keywords every day and queues the best-scoring ones.

Step 1 · Finding threads

The AI side is High-Value discovery. It writes 40 buyer-style questions without your brand name, asks each one to 4 AI models with live web search (Gemini, Claude, GPT and Grok), and collects, checks and ranks every Reddit and YouTube thread they cite, weekly. These are API models with search on, not the ChatGPT or Gemini apps, so treat the list like your own runs: a sample of what AI search reaches for, at 40 questions instead of 5.

40 questions · 4 AIs · ranked threads

For each thread, SlopMog drafts a comment in the thread's tone. You edit it, approve it or skip it, or switch a site to hands-free. A regular comment is 6 credits ($0.60) and a High-Value one is 60 ($6), so the $99 Test the Waters plan covers about 166 regular comments or 16 High-Value ones (every plan).

If you'd rather post every comment yourself, Redreach lists Reddit threads that already rank on Google's first page and suggests replies you post from your own account¹⁵. Here's how Redreach and SlopMog compare.