Google is hot for data, user-generated data, probably to train their Gemini bot, and they're looking for more public data they can use; Google doesn't have a social platform to source from since G+ went tits up, so it looks like Reddit is their go-to.
The search engine has seen user bias, with "Reddit" being a popular search refinement tool, so they are playing into that now. Google and Reddit recently struck up a partnership too, and man, have I been seeing a lot of Reddit results in Google search for my clients, it's nuts, complete overkill in fact.
I've seen tonnes of complaints in the SEO community of reddit stuffing so it looks like Google is adding a search refinement for forums.
Google claims they are making it easier for searchers to find content that reflects individuals' perspectives and first-hand experiences on Search.
I guess if you are running a forum like SN or you have your own Subreddit, you'll get a lot more love from search if you play by their rules.

Forum schema markups

Google has also pushed out schema markup support for Forum content; I checked if SN is using it using the rich results tool.
You can find the structured data format here, might be worth adding to post templates. This isn't to say Google is going to hand you more traffic, but playing into the trend never hurt.
420 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 17 Mar
We are totally underdoing SEO optimization. I think about it regularly.
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The site could for sure benefit from a few SEO tweaks, but even then I'm no confident as I used to be that changes immediately equal results
The last year has been tough, even if you are doing the right things, SERPs are being slammed with AI content and Google doesn't yet have an answer for it, and any update they make hits sites it didn't intend to hit.
I've never seen it this bad, SERP volatility hasn't been this high in ages
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