By Alexandra Bruell

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. Some say they feel Google is overstepping by forcing editorial decisions, such as who is assigned to write which pieces.

"Google is gatekeeping the revenue models publishers use to stay in business," Jeff Li, a general manager for digital at Time who recently left the company, said in a November LinkedIn post.

'Site reputation abuse'

Google launched its "site reputation abuse" policy early last year and updated its language in November to specify that its spam policy prohibits certain content "created by a separate entity" from appearing in its search pages, even with a publisher's oversight. By its definition, separate entities can include freelancers and content from services and people not employed directly by the host site.

Google says that affiliate content and freelancers aren't, on their own, violations of its policy, and that it is targeting content explicitly designed to get clicks by piggybacking on publishers' brands.

A Google spokesman said that sort of abuse "leads to a bad search experience for people and an uneven playing field for content creators."

About a week before Black Friday, leaders at Forbes Vetted couldn't find their content on Google's search engine. They determined that Google had flagged the site for running afoul of its guidelines, but weren't sure which specific rules they violated, according to people close to Forbes.

The Forbes leaders had a hunch the foul was related to its use of freelancers. In December, Forbes Vetted told freelancers it was cutting ties.

Christian de Looper, who has been writing about consumer technology for more than a decade, was one such freelancer. He said he understands that Google is trying to ensure users see high-quality content. "But I don't really see why who wrote it, in terms of their employment status, has anything to do with it," he added. De Looper, who is 31 years old, said he lost upward of 25% of his income as work with affiliate sites disappeared.

Since eliminating freelancer contributions, Forbes Vetted content began appearing back in Google's search engine.

"Forbes continues to partner closely with Google to ensure we're better serving our audiences," a Forbes spokeswoman said.

The Google spokesman said the company has a careful review and appeals process for site owners, including notifying them and providing details about which pages are affected and why. Publishing executives say the appeals process is murky.

Other freelancers on the outs

After its content was removed from Google search in November, Buy Side from WSJ changed its arrangement with third-party firm Credible, which was creating content for the site, according to a person familiar with the situation. The site is now publishing pieces from one full-time writer and considering hiring more full-time staff, this person said.

CNN Underscored, which worked with Marketplace for a portion of its content, found many of its articles were also delisted from Google late last year. The company ended the relationship with Marketplace, removed freelancer-written posts from Google search and stopped its work with many freelancers.

"Most of the publications just said this business model is not viable now," said Holly Johnson, who has been writing about personal finance for 15 years, including for CNN Underscored. "If you don't show up in Google search, you might as well not exist."

Some product-review sites were less affected. Traffic for the New York Times' Wirecutter and Vox Media's the Strategist, which are run by the publishers rather than by a third party and mostly written by full-time staffers, barely budged in January compared with a year earlier, according to Similarweb.

Some publishers have chosen to proactively remove material from Google, in hopes Google will allow new content from full-time writers to appear in search.

And some freelancers, hoping to avoid getting blacklisted by skittish publications, have asked to remove their bylines from articles on sites that were flagged by Google, according to people familiar with the requests.

Google said it isn't targeting sites based on a roster of freelancers, and has no such list.

"Freelancers are a huge part of the product-journalism industry," said Adam Doud, who averaged $1,500 to $3,000 a month with assignments for Forbes Vetted and CNN Underscored, supplementing a freelance editor job at SlashGear, a tech, automotive and gaming site. "The most infuriating part of the whole thing is there is absolutely no recourse."

Write to Alexandra Bruell at alexandra.bruell@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 27, 2025 08:00 ET (13:00 GMT)

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