The search visibility of the Forbes, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fortune, and Time affiliate businesses has fallen dramatically in recent months, according to data from the search visibility firm Sistrix and multiple search consultants.
That lost traffic is cumulatively worth at least $7.5 million, according to Sistrix.
These publishers had been generating passive revenue by working with third-party vendors, including Forbes Marketplace (a separate company from Forbes), Credible, and Three Ships, which operate affiliate businesses for these publishers on their domains using their branding.
For instance, while CNN Underscored recommends products under the CNN name, the operation is powered by the third-party company Forbes Marketplace. The two parties then split the resulting revenue.
The strategy makes the two operations practically indistinguishable, obscuring the involvement of the third-party vendor. It also greatly improves the search visibility of the affiliate arm, such that some analysts pejoratively refer to the practice as “parasite SEO.”
CNN and The Wall Street Journal declined to comment. Fortune, Time, Forbes Marketplace, Credible, and Three Ships did not respond to a request for comment. Forbes attributed the declines to standard fluctuations in search.
The July decline
The declines in search visibility first started in July, when Time’s affiliate business, Time Stamped, initially saw its search rankings plummet, according to search consultant Glenn Gabe.
In late September and continuing into October, other publishers’ affiliate businesses began experiencing similar nosedives, according to Sistrix, Gabe, and two other search consultants.
In total, between Sept. 12 and Oct. 31, search visibility declined 43% at Forbes Advisor, 77% at WSJ Buy-Side, 63% at CNN Underscored, 72% at Fortune Recommends, and 97% at Time Stamped, according to data compiled for ADWEEK by Sistrix.
In the highly competitive world of search rankings, even minute drops in visibility have outsized impacts on revenue, according to search analyst Lily Ray. And these declines are substantial.
“If we lost a single place in the SEO rankings, my editor was dealing with higher-ups getting on his case,” said one former staffer at Forbes Advisor.
However, the declines are isolated only to the affiliate arms of these publishers, said Sistrix marketing manager Steve Paine. So CNN Underscored declined in search visibility, but CNN.com did not.
This pattern is highly atypical, according to Paine. It is rare to see such a small number of sites be affected by an SEO update, and it is rarer still to see site directories, rather than the domains themselves, experiencing isolated drop-offs.