An industry group representing some of the largest news publishers on the Internet has fired off a letter to federal prosecutors and trade regulators encouraging them to investigate search algorithm changes made by Google in recent months.
The changes, as described by Google, were intended to help raise the visibility of original journalism while reducing the ranking of articles whose purpose was to spam readers into making purchases through affiliate links, which earn commissions for web publishers.
Over the years, the use of affiliate links has helped small bloggers, independent journalists and small content publishers generate revenue through commissions earned when a product or service is reviewed or mentioned. The use of affiliate links has grown with the adoption of ad blockers, which has chipped away at publisher revenues.
In recent times, larger publishers like Advanced Publications (Condé Nast), Hearst Corporation (Hearst Magazines, Hearst Television), Paramount Global (CBS News and Stations), McClatchy Company and Red Ventures have increased their use of affiliate links to support various journalistic initiatives or otherwise increase the revenue of their operations. In some cases, affiliate links are embedded in content that is designed to look like a news story, an issue that Google sought to tackle through its algorithm changes earlier this year.
In March, Google said its algorithm would now include elements that would push “low-quality, unoriginal results” to the bottom of the pile, or simply not display them in Google search results at all. The changes were intended to penalize web pages that were created solely for the intent of ranking high in Google searches with the overall mission of earning commissions from sales.
“We believe these updates will reduce the amount of low-quality content on Search and send more traffic to helpful and high-quality sites,” said Elizabeth Tucker, the Director of Product Management at Google. “Based on our evaluations, we expect that the combination of this update and our previous efforts will collectively reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40 percent.”
The changes were finalized in late April. With Google being the most-dominant search engine on the Internet, the effects were felt widely through the industry, with some publishers like Forbes and CNN losing millions of dollars as a result of the changes, according to AdWeek.
Now, the publishing industry’s trade association, the News Media Alliance, is pushing back. In a letter sent to the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, the organization asked for the two agencies to “act now to stop Google’s anti-competitive conduct before the effects become reversible.”
“Under this new policy, all partnerships where media companies publish third party content or affiliate links, regardless of editorial control and oversight, have the potential to risk Google manually removing content from ranking in search results,” the letter said. “Once this occurs, even in error, it can take Google weeks to months to remove manual actions applied against a site and return the website to its proper position in search results.”
The organization posited that the changes made by Google “treats important media partnerships like exploitative marketing practices and undermines the financial health of news companies in a way disconnected to actual value or protection for Google users.”
“It is a scattershot and reckless approach to moderation that is emblematic of the imperial approach Google takes in wielding monopoly power, especially when it comes to trusted providers,” the letter continued. “This decision has the potential to single-handedly wipe off the map affiliate content traffic and revenue streams that many news organizations rely on.”
Some smaller publishers have already shut down their websites after a similar algorithm change kicked in last year. The change, officially called the “Helpful Content Update,” affected niche-focused websites that included affiliate links throughout their product reviews or recommendations. In some cases, the update led to the deprivation of Google search referral traffic from websites that were obviously created and maintained to generate sales through spammy tactics, but a number of legitimate, independent content creators and news publishers — including The Desk — were wrongly misclassified by Google, leading to a massive public outcry.
@searchliaison Please explain to me why a spam site that copy and pasted my entire story is on the first page of Google when you search “Marco Gaudino,” but my story — the original source — is nowhere to be found?
Are spam sites more “helpful” than original journalism? pic.twitter.com/1zFWWoDbek
— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) April 14, 2024
In February, independent review outlet HouseFresh said its publication was immensely impacted by the Helpful Content Update pushed out by Google, to the point where its original articles that contained actual testing and reviews for air purifiers ranked significantly lower than spammy lists created by larger publications, some of whom recommended products that were recalled or otherwise no longer on the market.
“These Digital Goliaths are utilizing their websites’ authority and the public’s trust in their brands to sell every product under the sun,” HouseFresh publisher Gisele Navarro and founder Danny Ashton wrote. “They’re buying magazines we love, closing their print operations, turning them into digital-only, laying off the actual journalists who made us trust in their content in the first place, and hiring third-party companies to run the affiliate arm of their sites.”
Rather than try to smooth things over with small publishers, Google simply told them to create articles that conveyed more authority to the world and build foundations of trust with their existing audiences.
“We appreciate how much information Google has shared about what a high-quality review is and about helpful content in general, but these guidelines need to be applied to everyone,” Navarro and Ashton wrote. “These Digital Goliaths shouldn’t be able to use product recommendations as their personal piggy bank, simply flying through Google updates off the back of ‘the right signals,’ an old domain, or the echo of a reputable brand that is no longer.”
The algorithm changes pushed out earlier this year appeared to be Google’s attempt to do just that — apply their strict, yet opaque, criteria to small and large publishers alike. While the News Media Alliance was relatively quiet when the issue was benefitting large publishers over small content creators, there are now millions of dollars at risk if Google does not immediately reverse its position, or if federal regulators do not step in.
As for those smaller publishers, many were invited to a “Web Creator Summit” held on Google’s Northern California campus earlier this year. After being served a lunch of cold pickled chicken, the publishers were told they did nothing wrong to deserve the deprivation in traffic, and that many of them had and were still creating good content — but, they were also told to not expect any relief from Google’s algorithms anytime soon.
