In February, HouseFresh managing editor Gisele Navarro called out publishers like BuzzFeed and Rolling Stone as some of the culprits that publish content about air purifiers despite a lack of expertise — but Google rewards these sites with high rankings all the same. The result is a search results page filled with SEO-first content, designed to do not much more than rank highly on Google.
In a piece published today, she says HouseFresh has “virtually disappeared” from search results: search traffic has decreased 91 percent in recent months, from around 4,000 visitors a day in October 2023 to 200 a day today.
“We lost rankings we held for months (and sometimes years) for articles that are constantly being updated and improved based on findings from our first-hand and in-depth testing, our long-term experience with the products, and feedback from our readers,” Navarro writes. “Our article [previously ranked at #2] is now buried deep beneath sponsored posts, Quora advice from 2016, best-of lists from big media sites, and no less than 64 Google Shopping product listings. Sixty. Four.”
SEO-first affiliate content is being deployed ruthlessly at countless sites.
There is no obvious editorial necessity for Forbes to write articles like “Top 20 Largest Dog Breeds” or “What Fruits Can Dogs Eat?” — until you take a look at the sidebar of these stories, which are filled with dozens of affiliate links for pet insurance that Forbes gets a kickback from every time someone signs up.
Last year, when CNET was discovered to be using artificial intelligence tools to produce dozens of stories, it was SEO-heavy “evergreen” articles it focused on first. In the cases of Sports Illustrated and USA Today’s AI content debacles, it also was product reviews that were being churned out using automation tools.
The aggressive targeting of top Google search spots — with or without AI — by big media outlets affects small sites like HouseFresh the most. A significant loss of traffic for independent publishers is often enough to shutter an outlet entirely.
Even "honest reviews" aren't all that honest. My mother is an Amazon Vine affiliate, which is a program where they send you stuff for free and you write a review and get to keep it. They aren't overt about it, but they make it fairly obvious that you're supposed to write reviews that are positive overall.
Im in the Vine program (basic not the premium tier) and they are actually very explicit that you need to review the product fairly and how you actually feel about it. Ive given out 3 and two stars before for cords that weren't as advertised, shitty build, etc.
Granted, they DO want you to pump out a review for it within a month which is bad for longevity testing.
Of course, getting a product for "free" subconsciously probably makes reviewers a little more forgiving, which could be a problem.
I can't speak for it myself. I just know she told me that they keep sort of doing a wink wink, nudge nudge about making the reviews more positive than negative.