Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, explained that while SEOs hate to see Reddit and other forum threads show up so often in the Google Search results, searchers like seeing them. In fact, he said that searchers seek content out from these forums, and this is why Google shows them so often in the search results.
This came up when Lily Ray posted on X an example of the discussion and forums section showing Quora and Reddit threads for the query [weight loss]. She wrote, “Why, then, is it ok for Google to add a “Discussions and Forums” carousel above all of these E-E-A-T-driven medical results when we are seeing very clearly how Reddit is being overtaken by affiliate spam and scammers?”
She said, “For 6+ years, and throughout the QRG, Google has shared that YMYL queries – presumably like “weight loss” – require the highest levels of E-E-A-T. For 6+ years, we’ve seen sites like the CDC and Harvard ranking prominently for these queries, plus Google’s own “symptom search” knowledge panel, which was also supposedly curated using information from the Mayo Clinic and Harvard.” Asking” Isn’t this a big dangerous for Google?”
In which Danny Sullivan from Google replied that first, he will send the feedback back to the ranking team. But then went into explaining why Google currently does this.
He said on X, “That unit appears automatically if the systems think it might be relevant and useful. I’s not like someone said “put it first for that particular query” — which I know you understand, but others reading this might not.”
Why does Google show it so often? “I also know some of the SEO folks who tend to be vocal on this platform really dislike seeing more forum content in our search results. But actual searchers seem to like it. They proactively seek it out. It makes sense for us to be showing it to keep the search results relevant and satisfying for everyone. We explained more about the value last year here,” he wrote. We covered that over here in November. Google actually started showing these forums back in 2021.
That being said, Google has changed the perspectives filter to forums and even tested a web results filter in search.
Sullivan added:
Then after getting more push back, he added:
He actually spent a lot of time defending the rational here but I only included some of his responses.
In short, searchers tend to like these forum posts, they actively seek it out and Google is trying to give searchers what they want.
Forum discussion at X.
