Google unveiled a significant update to its existing Site Reputation Abuse policy in November 2024. The timing of the Nov. 19 update, just a week before Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days in the U.S., seemed to be intended for maximum impact. The policy overhaul resulted in a swift and steep visibility decline on the SERPs for several major publishers with affiliate content. This was the second significant update from Google in 2024 that impacted affiliate content, as the March 2024 spam update also included a site reputation abuse section.

As a recent Wall Street Journal article discussed, the fallout from the policy change has not only impacted the publishers who had built a significant revenue-driving portfolio of affiliate content, mostly in the form of product reviews, but the freelancers who created the bulk of that content. That’s because while Google doesn’t explicitly prohibit the use of freelancers to create product reviews and other affiliate content, publishers who ceased using freelancers to create such content have seen a rebound in visibility. You can clearly see the trend in this Trisolute News Dashboard Mobile SERP visibility snapshot for Forbes Vetted. 

Forbes Vetted has seen a spike in visibility since updating its affiliate content production to align with Google’s updated Site Reputation Abuse policy.

In addition to moving affiliate content production from freelancers to newsroom staff, Forbes Vetted has included a “What We Updated” widget at the top of their product review pages. Such tactics should be implemented by newsrooms with care. Harry Clarkson-Bennett, SEO Director of The Telegraph, shared an example in an interview with WTF is SEO, in which Google levied a manual penalty on a site in which one page didn’t match the publisher’s own affiliate content policy. 

Forbes Vetted includes a What We Updated widget on its product reviews.

We created a mobile SERP analysis for the news-related ranking types the News Dashboard tracks, including News Boxes, News Carousels, Featured Snippet and Visual Digest (Knowledge Panel). The analysis focuses on a set of well-known affiliate content news publishers as well as a keyword cluster of common keywords used for affiliate content. 

Date span of analysis: Nov. 1, 2024-Feb. 28, 2025.

Keywords: amazon, amazon black friday deals, best black friday deals, best deals, black friday, black friday deals, black friday sales, coupon, coupons, cyber monday, deal, deals, discount codes, labor day deals, lowest price, memorial day deals, presidents day deals, price drop, prime day, prime day deals, product review, product reviews, review, sales.

Keyword insights

Analyzing the keyword cluster we used for this analysis, the keyword “cyber monday” had the most overall mobile visibility rankings, followed by “black friday,” “amazon,” “amazon black friday deals,” and “price drop.” 

A snapshot of select news publishers and their Mobile SERP visibility for affiliate content, November 2024-February 2025.

Publisher insights

Not all news publishers who produce affiliate content were negatively impacted by Google’s updated Site Reputation Abuse policy. Some publishers were able to maintain or grow visibility.

Click on each image below to expand.

New York Magazine’s The Strategist led in both visibility and ranking amount for the Nov. 1, 2024-Feb. 28, 2025 time period of this analysis. The Strategist earned a total of 16,630 rankings on the Mobile SERP. The Strategist outranked competitors for the keywords “amazon black friday deals” and “best black friday deals.” Almost 40 percent of The Strategist’s visibility rankings for the analysis time period came from the article Best Amazon Black Friday Deals 2024.

The Strategist has continued its strong affiliate presence to begin 2025. It owned topic authority for the keyword, “presidents day deals” with the bulk of their visibility for that event coming from an article that’s a roundup of deals that are still live post-Presidents Day. The article headline, “Dyson, J.Crew, Patagonia: 126 Presidents’ Day Sales That Are Still Live” makes it explicit that this is still useful content to shoppers. The strategy of tracking and highlighting active deals beyond the specific holiday or sale event day worked well for multiple publishers in this analysis.

Wirecutter by The New York Times came in second place with 9,511 rankings, but earned third place in visibility behind Tom’s Guide. Wirecutter’s visibility took a brief drop around Nov. 22, but quickly rebounded. Wirecutter demonstrated topic authority for the keyword “black friday sales” during the analysis time period. Much like with The Strategist, Wirecutter’s top-performing article during the time period of this analysis was a post-event roundup: Black Friday May Be Over But Some Deals Are Still Kicking. These Are the Best.

Tom’s Guide had a surge in visibility the week of Nov. 10-16, outranking all publishers analyzed for the time period, which helped the publisher secure first place in visibility and rankings for November 2024. But Tom’s Guide suffered a significant decline in visibility just before Google released its updated Site Reputation Abuse Policy on Nov. 19. That visibility decline continued throughout the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping season. In spite of the visibility drop, Tom’s Guide held on to second place in visibility and third place in ranking amount with 9,013 rankings for the time span of this analysis.

Tom’s Guide found success in headlines using a first-person reference, with their top 3 most visible articles using that headline convention. 

Other notable insights

• Visual Digest (Knowledge Panel) rankings were surprisingly robust for affiliate content, with over 79,000 rankings on the mobile SERP. The keyword “cyber monday” was the top performer for this ranking type. Tom’s Guide had the most rankings for “black friday” and TechRadar had the most rankings for “cyber monday.”  NBC Select had the most visual digest rankings overall. NBC Select demonstrated strong topic authority for the keyword “amazon black friday deals” for the visual digest ranking type.
• There were a limited number of Publisher Carousel rankings for affiliate content, with just over 5,000 rankings in total. TechRadar led in visibility and ranking amount, demonstrating that niche publishers can thrive for this ranking type thanks to their expertise and specific area of content focus.
• For Live Flag rankings, Tom’s Guide led in visibility and ranking amount. Their top two articles included the word “live” in the headline. The keyword “black friday” was by far the top keyword for Live Flag mobile visibility rankings.
• In spite of Gannett shutting down Reviewed ahead of Black Friday, USA Today was able to remain competitive in affiliate content visibility during the holiday shopping season with staff-written content. USA Today came in sixth place in mobile visibility and fourth in ranking amount for the affiliate competitor set. USA Today had a strong performance in Video Box rankings for affiliate content.

Conclusion

It’s clear from Trisolute News Dashboard data that several publishers experienced declines in visibility for their affiliate content due to Google’s update to its Site Reputation Abuse policy. However, there is hope as we see some sites begin to recover their visibility for common affiliate content keywords. 

Publishers who have taken steps to recalibrate their affiliate content strategy and remove the issues that violated the policy guidelines and triggered Google’s manual actions should begin to see visibility recovery over time. Some publishers have opted to bring product review content in-house. Other publishers may decide it’s not worth the time and effort to continue affiliate content production. Any publisher who is considering building or growing their affiliate content presence will need to strictly abide by the guidelines in Google’s Site Reputation Abuse policy.

It’s more important than ever for news publishers with affiliate content to monitor its Google visibility on the SERPs to track the impact of any changes made to the production process and to ensure the content is abiding by Google guidelines.

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