Reddit updates its search to index comments, available globally on the web but not its apps, and improves natural language searches
The new rollout also comes with a refined search experience for desktop users on the platform — Today, Reddit is updating its search feature to index comments.
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2022 update was an early step in a long rebuild of Reddit's search: it brought comments into indexed results and added natural-language queries, but only on the web. A year later Reddit closed the gap, making comment search available across desktop, iOS, and Android via comment search from the main search bar.
The payoff shows up three years out: by August 2025 Reddit was explicitly positioning itself as "a go-to search engine," citing 70M+ weekly active unique search users and 6M weekly users for its AI tool Reddit Answers ([[a:888571]]). Today's rollout is the infrastructure layer that ambition rests on.
First-order effects
- Web users can now surface individual comments through search and phrase queries in natural language, while iOS and Android users are left on the older experience — a visible feature split between Reddit's platforms.
Second-order effects
- Comment-level indexing makes Reddit's archives answerable in ways they weren't before, which is exactly the corpus an LLM-based product like Reddit Answers needs; the web-first rollout also gives Reddit a test bed before committing engineering to native apps.
Third-order effects
- If the trajectory holds — comment search everywhere, then natural-language and AI answers layered on top — Reddit shifts from a community-browsing destination to a search-first one, competing directly with general-purpose engines for questions Reddit's discussions already answer.
The trend: Reddit has been methodically converting its comment archive into a searchable, AI-ready product, culminating in its stated ambition to become a go-to search engine.