Reddit Research

Description

Find out what real people are saying about any topic on Reddit — unfiltered opinions, recurring complaints, praise patterns, and emerging themes with real quotes and source links. Industry-agnostic. Use it to validate product decisions, detect early sentiment shifts, or mine real consumer language for positioning and messaging.

Core Capabilities

• Community auto-discovery: finds 5-15 relevant subreddits from keyword search, then selects the top 5 for scraping
• 3-layer analysis: Layer 1 (broad themes across all data), Layer 2 (segment-specific focus), Layer 3 (brand/product zoom — only when brand_focus is provided)
• Verbatim library: curated real quotes in blockquote format with u/username, r/subreddit, upvotes, and clickable source links
• Subreddit map: community table with member counts, dominant themes, post scores, and monitoring value assessment
• Language-aware keywords: auto-adapts search terms to each subreddit's language (English keywords for r/personalfinance, German for r/Finanzen, etc.)

Good Query Examples

• Research Topic: "How do small business owners feel about all-in-one project management tools like Monday.com, Asana, and Notion?" | Brand Focus: "Monday.com" → clear topic with brand focus, triggers all 3 analysis layers
• Research Topic: "Consumer sentiment around used EVs in Europe — battery degradation concerns, range anxiety, warranty gaps" → no brand focus, Layer 1 + Layer 2 only
• Research Topic: "Was denken deutsche Verbraucher über Hafermilch-Marken?" | Seed Subreddits: "r/Kochen, r/de" → German-language query with relevant seed subreddits
• Research Topic: "SaaS competitor analysis: what do users love and hate about HubSpot CRM?" | Brand Focus: "HubSpot" | Seed Subreddits: "r/sales, r/CRM" → brand + seeds + competitive angle

Bad Query Examples

• Research Topic: empty → no topic provided. Fix: describe the research question, industry, and specific angles you want covered
• Research Topic: "marketing" → too vague for meaningful community discovery. Fix: narrow the scope (e.g., "How do B2B marketers evaluate email marketing tools?")
• Research Topic: "What are people saying about our brand on Instagram and TikTok?" → Reddit-only data source. Fix: use Instagram Analysis or TikTok Analysis for those platforms
• Research Topic: "Monitor r/technology for AI mentions every day this week" → single point-in-time scrape, not ongoing monitoring. Fix: run separate analyses on different days
• Research Topic: "Complete analysis of every cryptocurrency subreddit" → max 5 subreddits per run, 10 posts per sub. Fix: focus on a specific angle (e.g., "Retail investor sentiment on Bitcoin ETFs") and run multiple times for broader coverage

Use-Case Ideas

• Brand monitoring — what are real users saying about your brand across Reddit communities?
• Competitive intelligence — compare how users discuss your product vs. competitors in the same subreddits
• Market entry research — gauge community sentiment before entering a new market or launching a product
• Product feedback mining — find unfiltered complaints, praise, and feature requests with real quotes
• Crisis signal detection — identify emerging negative themes before they hit mainstream media
• Localization research — compare sentiment across English, German, and other language subreddits for the same topic

Limitations

• 5 subreddits max per run — auto-discovered or seeded. For broader coverage, run multiple times with different angles
• 10 posts per subreddit, 20 comments per post — total item budget: 3,500. Not configurable
• Reddit data only — no cross-platform coverage. Use platform-specific plugins for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc.
• Reddit demographics bias — Reddit skews younger, more tech-savvy, and Western-leaning. Findings may not generalize to the broader population
• Point-in-time snapshot — reflects Reddit content at the time of scraping. No historical trend tracking
• Private/quarantined subreddits excluded — only publicly accessible communities
• Text-based sentiment only — images, memes, and video content in posts are not analyzed

Input/Output Spec

Input:

• research_topic (required): Research brief describing the industry, segment, and specific questions. Up to 1,500 characters
• seed_subreddits (optional): Known relevant subreddits to include (one per line, with or without r/). Up to 500 characters
• brand_focus (optional): Brand or product name for dedicated Layer 3 analysis. Up to 200 characters

Output:

• Markdown report with 7 mandatory sections:
• Executive Summary: 3-5 key findings
• Theme Map: table of 5-15 themes with mention counts, sentiment scores, key signals, top subreddits
• Layered Analysis: Layer 1 (broad), Layer 2 (segment), Layer 3 (brand — if brand_focus provided)
• Verbatim Library: real quotes organized by theme with source links
• Subreddit Map: community table with members, posts found, dominant themes, monitoring value
• Methodology Note: data sources, queries, confidence level (Low <50 posts / Moderate 50-150 / High 150+)
• Further Research Suggestions: data-driven next steps citing specific evidence

Disambiguation Signals

This agent scrapes Reddit communities for real user opinions, sentiment patterns, and verbatim quotes. It is platform-specific and evidence-based — "What are real people saying about this topic on Reddit?"

• Route to News Research when: the user wants news/media coverage analysis, not social media sentiment
• Route to Advanced Web Research when: the user wants broad web research beyond a single platform
• Route to Ask the Crowd when: the user wants structured opinion polling from virtual personas, not real Reddit data
• Route to GWI Spark when: the user wants quantitative consumer survey data about demographics or media behavior
• Route to Instagram/TikTok/YouTube/Facebook Analysis when: the user wants platform-specific analysis for those channels