New search experience for everyone.

A new search experience launched to 100% of the users across native and desktop devices. The work was featured in TechCrunch, The Verge and AdWeek.

The numbers:

• 15.6% improvement in CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) for Search
• 2.7% increase in ads revenue
• 1.2% increase in post detail pages
• 2.2% decrease in bad content interaction rate

Understanding the problem space.

My team started by asking users by asking users what they want to see changed for Reddit search. We built a post on Reddit with a link to a Google Form, asking Redditors for feedback.

We found three main areas to focus on:

Improving search relevance

The backend team started to work on search relevance and introduced less restrictive matching. For example, let’s say you search for “dogecoin stonks 2021,” and don’t get any results because there isn’t an exact match; with our new treatment, you’ll be more likely to get results even if there aren’t exact text matches and will get more results than you would have before. Using less restrictive matching resulted in a 60% increase in results for queries that previously didn’t receive results.

The old search experience wouldn't show results if the query didn't match.

Considering search intent

Different types of searches have different intents and purposes. I worked with the research team to understand user intent behind their search queries. From the research and experiments, I found that users want to see posts that are newer and posts that are similar to what they’re looking for even if the search term isn’t reflected in the post title. Depending on what type of search it is, we can sort those results more appropriately.

Example: The query Ontario was trending, so in our experiment (left) we automatically gave the posts a Hot sort, and on the right (control) we used a Relevance sort to see if the results were more aligned with what people were looking for.

Sorting results for queries based on your intent resulted in a +4.2% lift in clicks on the top result and gains in other relevance metrics.

Overhauling the interface

To make it easier for users to find and scan information on the web, I designed a two column layout. Our data showed that the majority of users are looking for posts first and communities second. My new design prioritized that.

Previous version of desktop search.

Helping out during challenging times

Reddit has partnered with Crisis Text Line since 2019 to provide redditors with 24/7 support from trained Crisis Counselors. Previously, redditors could only find these resources if a concerned redditor reported something that worried them. Now, those using Reddit search to look for things that signal they may be seeking support for themselves or others will see relevant Reddit communities where they can get support, as well as information about Crisis Text Line and other off-platform support resources.

My team and I worked with the moderators of r/SuicideWatch, whose expert advice and guidance was a major influence on how we reach out to people with these resources.

Comment Search

Throughout the whole search overhaul, we kept asking the community what other features they wanted to see. For the last 15 years, users have wanted the ability to search comments on Reddit. Some users went as far as making their own search engines to help people find comments on Reddit.

I designed out a tab to help users filter for comments across Reddit. This feature not only allows you to search comments within communities, but also unlocks the ability to search comments globally to discover valuable discussions happening across Reddit. To make the idea a reality, it took some time because just to start, we had to scale up the search function to index the over 5 billion comments that have been made in the past two years.

After making this change, there was a 7% drop in people getting no results, and 17% more subscriptions to subreddits via search for Android users.