Reddit hopes to impress users with faster search engine

Just days after the announcement of a premium membership service, social news site Reddit has launched a new search feature. Hosted by white-label search technology provider IndexTank, Reddit’s updated search engine lets users search for posts in real-time and, according to the Reddit blog, “is pretty bloody fast.”

The update comes in response to complaints about the site’s search accuracy and speed. A quick search on Reddit’s site for “Reddit search engine” reveals common problems faced by its most avid users, including site outages and difficulty finding unbookmarked posts.

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Despite complaints, Reddit’s search engine woes have not deterred loyal users. The site claims 8 million unique monthly visitors and 400 million monthly page views. In response to a recent request for donations (in the form of subscription fees), Reddit signed up 9,000 users for its Reddit Gold service in just one week.

The new search function allows users to search for posts by title, text and author’s username. It also lets users limit their search to self-posts and specific subreddits, but comments to posts are not currently searchable.

Reddit was founded in 2005 through Y Combinator and was acquired by magazine publisher Conde Nast in 2006. IndexTank is a product of search business Flaptor, whose clients include blog publishing platform WordPress.