Google search changes upend publishers’ product-review sites

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Google changed its rules around how product-review sites appear in its search engine. In the process, it devastated a once-lucrative corner of the news media world.

Sites including CNN Underscored and Forbes Vetted offer tips on everything from mattresses and knife sets to savings accounts, making money when users click on links and buy products. They depend on Google to drive much of their traffic, and therefore revenue. But over the past year, Google created stricter rules that dinged certain sites that farm out articles to freelancers, among other things.

The goal, Google has said, was to give users higher-quality search results. The outcome was a crisis for some sites. Traffic for Forbes Advisor, a personal-finance recommendation site, fell 83% in January from the same month the year before, according to data firm Similarweb.

CNN Underscored and Buy Side from WSJ, which is operated by Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones, were both down by more than 25% in that period. Time magazine’s Time Stamped and the Associated Press’s AP Buyline, powered by Taboola Turnkey Commerce, ended their efforts in recent months. Taboola closed the commerce operation.

Publishers’ relationships with Google have long been fraught with challenges, but the tech company looms ever larger as referrals from social-media sites such as Meta Platforms and X decline. They scramble when Google tweaks its algorithms, updating website designs or crafting headlines to notch higher in search rankings. The latest changes are among the most dramatic, say executives.