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Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

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Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#101

Post by djoldman »

> NerdWallet is publicly traded (NRDS) and its business depends on converting search visitors into financial product referrals. It went from 25M monthly organic visits to 6.8M, a 73% decline.

The above refers to the time until Jan 2026. Here are its financials:

  Year   Total Revenue   Operating Expenses   Net Income
  2025   $836.6          ~$708.0              $48.7
  2024   $687.6          $614.7               $30.4
  2023   $599.4          $541.8               ($11.8)
  2022   $538.9          $518.1               ($10.2)
  2021   $379.6          $390.1               ($42.5)
It doesn't look like the lower traffic, if true, has hit the bottom line yet.

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#102

Post by sudoshred »

ronsor wrote: post #76
wildrhythms wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These news sites run ads that are borderline gore, disturbing images promoting snake oil weight loss or skin care treatments, and wonder why nobody wants to click into their site.

But I love internet chum! Don't forget "new law thing"; that's an important category.

"internet chum" is a good one, it echoes "slop bowl".

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#104

Post by dredmorbius »

sudoshred wrote: post #102
ronsor wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I love internet chum! Don't forget "new law thing"; that's an important category.

"internet chum" is a good one, it echoes "slop bowl".

"Chumbox" has been a descriptive term since 2015:

"A Complete Taxonomy of Internet Chum" (4 June 2015)

https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-intern...>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumbox>

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#105

Post by Apreche »

Potentially hot take.

I would guess some people will say traffic is down because people are using LLMs to get news and are not reading news sites anymore.

My hypothesis is that all these tech sites are writing about are LLMs. People are sick and tired of reading about that, so they are not going to those sites anymore.

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#106

Post by daxfohl »

So, soon the sources will be out of business and the LLMs will have no information to look up.

I guess the future model is, LLMs pay for raw data and news to ingest and use on demand, and ignore the "free" internet. That seems like a good landing point, where quality info is rewarded and cheap spin is not. Of course cheap spin will continue to be produced, but hopefully won't be baked into the system.

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#107

Post by nsvd2 »

hydrogen7800 wrote: post #14
PacificSpecific wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the hardware changes significantly and those sites don't exist in the future wouldn't that mean gemeni would degrade in quality because it has nothing to pull from?

Right, that success story is only because there was "organic" (for lack of a better term) information from an original source. What happens when all information is nth generation AI feedback with all links to the original source lost? Edit: A question from AI/LLM ignorance- Can the source database for an LLM be one-way, in that it does not contain output from itself, or other LLMs? I can imagine a quarantined databas…

Yes, people have likened pre-LLM Internet content to low-background steel.

If in the hypothetical future the continual learning problem gets solved, the AI could just learn from the real world instead of publications and retain that data.

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#109

Post by vineyardmike »

pocksuppet wrote: post #96
structural wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile users (or other locked down devices where adblockers are forbidden) are still a decent chunk of traffic. It's much easier to just read the overview and not click through to the ad infestation, or even use a chatbot of choice as the search engine instead of going to Google, because "websites is how you get spammed with ads".

> Mobile users (or other locked down devices where adblockers are forbidden) Just say Apple. They're still allowed on Android, although I don't think you can get them from the Play Store.

Not allowed on my work computer. Which I do use the internet on.

Also you can put ad block on Apple devices.

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#110

Post by nerevarthelame »

The results seem plausible, but it's worth noting that the source of their data (Ahrefs) is just a rough estimate. Given that every publication they examined - including several outside of the tech industry - showed declines, I'd hope they would confirm that it's not an artifact of the estimation process. Ahrefs themselves caution against using their data to make these sorts of conclusions:

>While these estimates don’t, and can’t, show you exactly how much organic traffic a website gets, they work incredibly well for comparison. For example, it’s fantastic for learning if your competitors’ websites get more or less organic search traffic than your own.

(https://help.ahrefs.com/en/articles/1863206-what-is-organic-...)

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