Making Reddit comments was the top requested feature and extremely used during testing. Finally, Reddit has make its comments searchable.
After 17 years, Reddit announced in a blog post that users can now get search results from replies to posts, rather than just the original posts and topics within a community.
Before, you would have to look or browse through each post in the Reddit community to see comments. Now, you can easily see all the different recommendations on the best places for high tea that people have shared in comments.
The ability to search comments was the top feature request by users from a survey conducted by Reddit in 2021. For that reason, during Reddit's "limited initial testing", around 26,000 people employed the feature to scan through more than five billion comments.
Reddit also improve search relevance to enable users find results. Before, a result had to match a query nearly exactly, but it's now less restrictive. "For Instance, let’s say someone searches for 'dogecoin stonks 2021,' and doesn't find what they’re looking for because there isn't an exact match; with our new treatment, they’re more likely to get related results." In fact, Reddit said that it saw a 60 percent increase in results for queries that previously didn't receive results. Search now also prioritizes newer content looks at a users search history to prioritize results.