Your Customers Are Asking AI About Your Business — And Reddit Is the Answer Source

Picture this: a potential customer in Kuala Lumpur types into ChatGPT, “Which accounting software is best for a small business in Malaysia?” You don’t even know they asked. But whatever the chatbot replies — that’s the recommendation they’ll act on.

Now here’s the uncomfortable part. That AI answer is increasingly written from Reddit threads. And those threads, as a recent investigation by The Verge revealed, are being flooded with fake reviews, disguised brand promotions, and automated spam designed to fool AI chatbots.

If you think Reddit is irrelevant to Malaysian SME owners, you might be dismissing the exact place where your next customer’s opinion is being formed.

TL;DR

• Reddit is now the most-cited source in AI chatbot responses — ahead of Wikipedia and news sites.
• Marketers are posting fake “authentic” comments on Reddit to manipulate what AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity say about brands.
• Malaysian SMEs can’t ignore this: your brand reputation is being shaped on Reddit, with or without you.

What This Means: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) Has Gone Dirty

Remember the old days of SEO? You wrote a blog post, built backlinks, and hoped to rank on Google. That’s still relevant, but a new game is taking over: making sure AI chatbots quote you when someone asks a question.

This is called AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) or GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). The goal isn’t a click — it’s a mention. AI has changed the rules so that a brand doesn’t even need a backlink anymore. A single credible-sounding Reddit comment can get picked up by an AI response, as reported in the source article.

Here’s what the data says: according to Semrush data compiled for The Verge, Reddit was the most-cited domain in May by AI tools ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s Gemini and AI Mode. That means when your customers are doing product research, the answer they get is likely pulled from a Reddit thread — even if that comment was written by a paid marketing firm pretending to be a casual user.

“When web traffic is funneled through LLMs instead of a traditional search results page, being cited by a chatbot becomes ever more important.”

The Verge investigation highlighted a real case: a skincare brand, Honeydew Labs, was suspected of using a network of fake Reddit accounts to promote its hypochlorous acid spray across multiple subreddits. One account called Primary-Taro4254 shared detailed, helpful-sounding reviews — but Reddit moderators quickly caught on, banned the accounts, and began auto-filtering all mentions of the brand. The brand didn’t respond to The Verge, but the lesson is clear: the fight between spammy marketers and human moderators is escalating.

How This Applies to Malaysian SMEs

You might not be a skincare brand, and you may not have a marketing team dedicated to Reddit. But the shift affects you in three concrete ways.

First: your reputation is already being written for you. If a customer asks an AI assistant “best wedding photographer in Penang” or “which local bakery has good durian cakes?”, the AI sources from Reddit-heavy communities like r/Malaysia or r/malaysians. If nobody has genuinely reviewed your business there, the answer will come from a thread you don’t control — possibly even a competitor’s marketing team planting a glowing review for themselves and a negative one for you. According to The Verge, brands and agencies are actively “hijacking” subreddit threads to manipulate AI rankings. This isn’t a far-away Silicon Valley problem — it’s happening in any niche with commercial value.

Second: Malaysian SMEs have a real opportunity to be the authentic voice. Reddit moderators are getting more sophisticated — the r/SkincareAddiction subreddit, with over 1 million weekly visitors, now requires moderator review for any mention of brands suspected of spam, as noted in the source article. This means fake content is being filtered out, and genuine, helpful comments are rising to the top. If you’re a Malaysian business owner who can answer questions honestly on Reddit — without overtly promoting yourself — you can build the kind of credibility that AI tools will cite. For example, if you run a digital marketing agency in Johor Bahru, you can genuinely help someone in r/malaysia asking about the best tools for social media scheduling. Those replies are gold for future AI citations.

Third: you need a monitoring system. You can’t assume that just because you don’t use Reddit, your customers don’t either. Google is also inserting AI Overviews much more frequently into commercial queries, as Semrush also found — meaning AI-generated summaries are becoming your storefront. Set up a simple Google Alert or use a free Reddit search to check for your brand name weekly. This is not vanity monitoring; it’s early-warning detection for reputation attacks.

Practical Takeaways for Malaysian SME Owners

• Search Reddit for your brand name today. Type “your business name + Malaysia” into Reddit’s search bar. Note what you find.
• Contribute authentically, not commercially. Use a personal or company account that clearly identifies your role. Avoid fake accounts — moderators will ban you, and AI tools will learn to filter you out.
• Answer real questions in niche subreddits. If you run an F&B business, join food-related Malaysia subreddits and share your expertise, not your menu. The AI ecosystem rewards valuable responses.
• Set a monthly reminder to re-check. Spend 15 minutes a month to search for competitors, your brand, and common industry queries on Reddit. See what answers AI is likely pulling.
• Never pay for Reddit “influencer” comment placements. The source article shows how quickly these get detected and backfire, turning your brand into “persona non grata” within a community.

Data Snapshot: Where AI Is Pulling Answers From

Source / Metric	Value / Finding	Source
Reddit’s position in AI citations (May, 4 main AI tools)	Most-cited domain, ahead of Wikipedia	Semrush via The Verge
Google AI Overviews in commercial search queries	Frequency increasing vs. a year ago	Semrush via The Verge
Weekly visitors to r/SkincareAddiction	Over 1 million	The Verge
Brands’ ability to influence AI without a backlink	Yes — a mere “mention” can suffice	SEO experts quoted by The Verge

The Bigger Picture: Trust Will Be Decided by the Most Human-Sounding Source

AI tools don’t have opinions — they aggregate. So the long-term trend is that every business, from a small nasi kandar stall to a regional logistics company, needs to exist in the places AI reads. Right now, that place is Reddit. But the same challenge will pop up on other platforms: forums, review sites, Telegram groups, and even local Facebook groups that AI models scrape.

The brands that win will be those who treat every online mention as data for an AI engine. This means you need to show up, be genuinely useful, and never hide behind fake personas. Moderators and algorithms are both getting better at spotting manipulators — the original article showed that Google has its own rules against spam, and while Reddit gets “no special preference,” its authentic community content keeps surfacing at the top.

As a Malaysian SME owner, you don’t need to become a Reddit expert. But you do need to know that the conversation about your business is happening there — and that AI is listening. Start small, be real, and you’ll be ahead of every competitor still trying to buy their way to the top.

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