Reddit sues Perplexity, SerpApi over scraping Google Search data

Reddit is taking four data-scraping companies to court – including AI search engine Perplexity and SEO data firm SerpApi – accusing them of illegally using its content via Google search results.

The lawsuit. SerpApi, Oxylabs, AWMProxy, and Perplexity “devised a scheme” to scrape Reddit data indirectly from Google, then resell or reuse it to train AI models. That’s according to Reddit’s lawsuit, filied today in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

• Reddit alleged the companies hid their identities to bypass technical restrictions and scraped its data “at an industrial scale.”
• Reddit is seeking financial damages, a permanent injunction, and a ban on using or selling previously scraped data.
• SerpAPI was or is a customer of OpenAI, which explained how Google search results sometimes appeared in ChatGPT.

Why Reddit sued. Reddit already licenses its data to OpenAI and Google – but said others have tried to sidestep those deals.

• The complaint claims Reddit even “set a trap” for Perplexity, creating a test post only visible to Google’s crawler. Within hours, that post appeared in Perplexity search results – evidence that the company relied on scraped Google data, Reddit said.

Why we care. It’s harder than ever for SEOs and site owners to access reliable search data. Google is cracking down on scraping and tightening APIs just as websites are seeing traffic drop from AI overviews and zero-click results. The result: less visibility, fewer insights, and a tougher environment to understand — or influence — AI search.

Meanwhile. Reddit and Google are reportedly discussing a new partnership that would weave Reddit content more directly into Google’s AI products. If those talks advance, more Reddit discussions could surface in AI Overviews and other Google experiences – potentially further reshaping how Reddit and Google influence your brand visibility and traffic.

The big picture. AI is scraping continues to rise, but it still isn’t sending meaningful visitors back. Google sends 831x more visitors than AI systems, according to TollBit.

• Cloudflare shared data in July highlighting the skewed ratio of crawls compared to the number of visitors sent to a website:
  • Google: 18:1
  • OpenAI: 1,500:1
  • Anthropic: 60,000:1
• Google and content creators used to work symbiotically – but that relationship has turned adversarial since the emergence of generative AI due to the rise of zero clicks and decline of organic traffic.

The New York Times report. Reddit Accuses ‘Data Scraper’ Companies of Stealing Its Information (subscription required)