It seems to me that googling for a popular site like reddit is actually pretty common. A couple of reasons:
1. Because google is often much better at returning relevant results for site:<site>.com <query> than searching for <query> in the site's search engine. I would think this to be the case even more so for types of sites like reddit simply because of such high total post / word count. In fact, brand recognition would seem to be more of a reason for people to google it. E.g. If you want to read a wikipedia article on some topic, you normally wouldn't visit wikipedia.org first to use its search, you'd google "wikipedia <topic>" or "site:wikipedia.org <topic>".
2. To avoid hitting enter after a typo and ending up on some malware site <domain with typo>.com.
And good search is hard to do.
> What this means is that, unlike so many other gaming trends, Fortnite truly seems like it's here to stay. According to Google searches, Fortnite has a ways to go to reach the staggering highs of Pokémon Go, the popular mobile game that became a huge phenomenon throughout the summer of 2016.
The argument is that Fortnite is not a fad, and then it's immediately compared to one of the biggest gaming fads in recent memory? And it isn't quite as popular as that fad? Okay.
> “More people in the U.S. are searching for ‘Fortnite’ on Google than they are for ‘Reddit’ and these searches have risen sharply over the last two months," said John DeFeo, VP of Internet Marketing at Purch, Tom's Guide's parent company.
What a genius comparison! Perhaps a site that's been around for over a decade and already has mass brand recognition might not get as many people googling it bare, since most people can just... go there directly.