Reddit's increased reliance on Google traffic has Wall Street anxious to see if visitors sign up

For nearly a decade, Tom Wahlin's popular travel gear site Pack Hacker ranked high in Google's search results by publishing deeply researched product reviews.

But something changed this year, as Wahlin noticed that his company's reviews were often falling below a series of Reddit links. A few weeks ago, for example, Wahlin discovered that when he searched for the Aer Travel Pack 3, Pack Hacker's review of the premium backpack was no longer leading Google's results, which it had been for a "very, very long time," he said.

The Reddit links that preceded his site all sent users to various forums where users discussed the popular travel backpack. In a particular twist of fate, the top Reddit post included several comments about Pack Hacker's YouTube video review of the bag.

"It's funny, because we're mentioned in that Reddit post," Wahlin said. "Pack Hacker is mentioned a couple of different times, but we're still below the Reddit result."

Reddit's rise in search rankings is the result of a series of updates by Google stemming back to last year that boosted "authentic" content from online forums. Because Reddit dwarfs other forum sites, the 19-year-old company was likely the biggest beneficiary of the Google update, said Lily Ray, the vice president of search engine optimization and research at the Amsive marketing agency.

Amsive found that Reddit is ranked fifth among U.S. sites in terms of visibility in Google's U.S. organic search results as of July, up from 68^th a year ago.

"I think the rate of growth that Reddit has seen is something pretty unusual for our industry," Ray said.

The challenge for Reddit, which held its stock market debut five months ago, is to make money off people who land on the company's website after