What’s Happening Now?
In the last few days, affiliate directories of many well-known publications have seen a sharp drop in search engine results page (SERP) visibility. This sudden change comes after Glenn Gabe’s "stop-the-presses" post revealed that Google had penalized various affiliate directories through a spate of manual actions.
The Story Behind the Drop
Publications began monetizing their historic authority by creating affiliate directories, and in doing so, started to rank for many commercially competitive keywords. SEOs and affiliates criticized these publications for producing inauthentic affiliate content that prioritized profit over providing value to the end user. Around the same time, hundreds of independents incurred SERP "shadowbans" in the wake of Google’s Helpful Content Update (September 2023) and have been struggling to regain visibility ever since.
The Impact on Affiliate Publications
Aside from the occasional drop, it’s been business as usual for many big-name affiliate publications. But that all changed last week. In the last few days, the affiliate directories of many well-known publications have seen significant drops in traffic.
The Numbers
The highest value commercial keywords lost include:
- Truck crash attorney: $129.15
- Best car accident lawyer in Houston: $81.54
- Austin auto accident lawyer: $68.25
- Mesothelioma lawyer directory: $67.88
- Car crash attorneys: $60
Affiliate publications were ranking for some of the most competitive law queries out there, but now that they’re out of the picture, these terms are back on the table.
Top Stories Features Lost
From the outset, the publications struggled to rank for most SERP features, with 89.4% of their keywords failing to generate any. Among the few that did, the most common feature was Top Stories, representing 7.4% of all lost positions.
Wrapping Up
Here’s the TL;DR:
- Google slammed affiliate directories with manual penalties, tanking their visibility.
- $4M/month in traffic value was lost on average by top publishers like WSJ and CNN.
- The big players snagged that lost traffic: Reddit, Bankrate, and Amazon.
- The most affected keywords were financial and e-commerce terms, with medium-low difficulty.
- High-stakes keywords (e.g. "truck crash attorney") are now up for grabs.
- Hundreds of informational and commercial queries have been released.
- Small players see hope, but giants still dominate the traffic game.