Open source intelligence research based on Reddit(2)

Related: Open source intelligence research based on Reddit(1)

Search Engine

Reddit has a built-in search function that allows for searching within the platform. Unlike other platforms, the built-in search function within the platform is limited compared to search engine results. Reddit allows search engines to index their site, which means that profiles and posts will appear in the search results.

With Google search indexing, you can view a large amount of information from Reddit, such as posts, profile pages and sub-Reddits. Here's how to get started.

site:reddit.com

By typing this simple command into a search engine (such as Google), you will tell the search engine to only show pages from the website www.reddit.com.

The 'site:' operator removes any pages from other sites from the search results. We'll start here by looking at the types of content available on the Reddit platform. At the time of writing, specifically in our browser, Google has 166 million results from reddit.com in its index.

site:reddit.com/user/

By adding /user/ to the end of our first query, we can narrow our search results from 166,000,000 to 8,640,000, showing only Reddit profile pages.

site:reddit.com/user/ "username"

After the site:reddit.com/user/ query, adding any keywords will allow you to search for user accounts on the Reddit platform. When doing this search, you should enter the search string in quotes. For example, when searching for the username "Gallowboob", we can use the query site: reddit.com/user/"Gallowboob" to reduce our results from 8,640,000 to 14,800.

site:reddit.com/r/subredditname

By appending /r/subredditname to the end of our original site reddit.com query, we narrowed our search results to those from a specific subreddit. For example, by adding subreddit worldnews, we can use the query site reddit.com/r/worldnews to specify that we only want results from the worldnews subreddit, which will reduce our results from 166,000,000 to 163,000.

site:reddit.com/r/subredditname "keyword/username"

By adding subreddit queries with keywords or usernames in quotation marks, we narrowed the search results to those containing specific keywords or within a specific subreddit made by a specific user.

It is important to understand that search engines can only show pages that they have indexed, not any pages that exist. Therefore, brand new user accounts and posts are unlikely to appear in the search results.

Platform field search URL

When searching within the Reddit platform itself, investigators can take advantage of the built-in search bar and URL actions.

https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=subreddit%3Akeyword

Investigators can search for subreddits by keyword, replacing the "keyword" with the relevant topic in the URL above. For example, https://www.reddit.com/search/?q-subreddit%3Aosint.

https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=title%3Akeyword

Investigators can search for posts containing subject keywords by replacing "keyword" with the relevant subject in the URL above. For example, https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=title%3Aosint.

https://www.reddit.com/search?q=url:keyword

Investigators can search for posts containing URLs or keywords from URLs by replacing "keyword" with the relevant URL or keyword from the URL above. For example, https://www.reddit.com/search?q=url:osint.

https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=author%3username

Investigators can search for posts by specific Reddit users by replacing "username" in the URL above with the target "username". For example, https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=author%3Agallowboob.

https://www.reddit.com/search?q=flair:keyword

Investigators can search for posts containing a specific word in a topic style by replacing "keyword" with the relevant topic in the URL above. For example, https://www.reddit.com/search?q=flair:osint.