"Younger People Are Using Reddit." Cool. My Customer Is 59.

In October 2025 I saved a note about something Liz Reid said. She runs Google Search.

On the Wall Street Journal's podcast she said people are going to short-form video, forums, and user-generated content instead of traditional websites. And that Google has adjusted its ranking over time to surface more of that content, because that's where users were already going.

Every marketing guy in the country ran with that quote. Nine months later, the data came in and they were mostly right about the mechanics.

But read her sentence again. She said "particularly true with younger users."

Nobody stopped to ask how young. So I did. And it changes the whole playbook for service business owners.

First, the damage is real

The gray AI answer box now shows on roughly half of U.S. searches. Google's own number.

When it shows up, the top-ranked page loses about 58% of its clicks. Ahrefs, 300,000 keywords. It was 34.5% in spring 2025. It's 58% now. Getting worse, not better.

68% of all Google searches now end without a click to anybody's website. Almost 7 out of 10.

If you run a blog to pull in traffic, that should scare you. Google is answering "how much does junk removal cost" before the customer ever reaches your post.

But here's the part that matters.

Who is actually calling you?

Reid's "younger users" means 18 to 29. Pew's numbers: 47% of that group is on TikTok every day. For people 65 and up, it's 5%.

Now look at who owns the house you're hauling out of.

The median age of a U.S. home buyer is 59. First-time buyers: 40, an all-time high. Repeat buyers: 62, also an all-time high. (Redfin's method puts it lower — 35 and 47 — but even the friendliest read has your customer in their forties.)

Your customer is not 24. Your customer is 40 to 62. They own a house, they've got a garage full of thirty years of stuff, or they just buried a parent and inherited a colonial in Wallingford full of furniture.

So all the "get on TikTok, get on Reddit" advice? It's aimed at a person who isn't calling you.

Doesn't mean the advice is wrong. It means the reasons everybody's giving are wrong. And once you fix the reasons, you fix the moves.

The move that survives contact with your actual customer

Local searches barely trigger the AI box. "Junk removal near me." "Dumpster rental [town]." "Roofer in [town]." The overlap between local-intent searches and AI Overviews is somewhere around 4–8%. Google fires the map pack instead. It has to (for now). It can't hand "who's hauling my couch Saturday" to a paragraph (yet).

Meanwhile 99.2% of the keywords that trigger an AI box are informational. How-to. What-is. Best-of. That's the stuff getting eaten.

Translation: your Google Business Profile and your service pages are fine. Your blog-to-get-found strategy is dead. Not dying one day. It's dead right now.

So pour everything into the Google profile. Reviews, real job photos, weekly posts, tight categories, correct service area. The map pack is the one piece of real estate AI hasn't taken, and Google has every financial reason to keep it that way. That's your money and where your focus should be.

The two platforms your customer is actually on

Forget TikTok. Look at Pew's age cuts.

YouTube: 85% of 50–64 year olds. 64% of 65+. It is the only platform a majority of every single age group uses. Short video isn't a Gen Z thing. It's the one format that spans your entire buying population.

Facebook: 74% of 50–64. 80% of 30–49. And 54% of 50–64 year olds are on it daily. Local Facebook groups are, literally, where a homeowner types "anyone know a good junk removal guy?" Go look at your town's group right now.

So: one short video a week, phone camera, job site, 40 seconds, talking over the video. And show up in the local groups as a person, not a business page blasting coupons.

That's not "adapting to Gen Z." That's going where the 55-year-old with a full basement already is.

And Reddit? Different job entirely.

Only 16% of 50–64 year olds use Reddit. Your customer is not there.

But Reddit is about 1 in 5 of the sources Google's AI box quotes.

Read that twice. Reddit isn't a customer channel for you. It's an input to the machine that answers your customer. Two completely different rooms.

When a homeowner asks Google "is it cheaper to rent a dumpster or hire junk removal," the AI is building that answer partly out of Reddit threads. If real operators are in those threads giving real answers, that's what gets synthesized. If it's just SEO spam, that's what gets synthesized.

So you go there. Not to sell. To answer, as yourself, with the actual numbers from actually doing the work. You're not fishing for a customer on Reddit. You're feeding the thing that talks to your customer.

That's the whole game now, and almost nobody has named it correctly. This is important.

Three moves

1. Google Business Profile is your money real estate. Reviews, photos, weekly posts, tight categories. Local searches still send people to real businesses. Defend that. (Local SEO for home services is the full playbook.)

2. One short video a week — for YouTube and Facebook, not TikTok. 85% of your buying demo is on YouTube. Three-quarters are on Facebook. Your phone and a job site is plenty.

3. Get quoted where the AI reads. Reddit and forums, answering as an operator. Not because customers are there — because the answer engine is. Understanding this is key. (More on the machinery in AI search visibility for home services.)

Bottom line

The sky is falling on people who built a business ranking for "what is a [insert your service]".

You didn't. You built one on showing up when someone in your town needs a truck tomorrow. That search still works exactly like it always did — and now you know which of the panic-headlines actually apply to a 59-year-old homeowner with household projects to be done.

Plant your feet in the right spot.

✌️

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Want a free read on whether your marketing is aimed at your actual customer?

I built Adimize for home service operators who are done taking advice meant for someone else's business. Tell me where you're spending time and money, and I'll tell you what a 40-to-62-year-old homeowner in your market actually sees.

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— Justin

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