Searching for search traffic

If you’re just rereporting a lot of other reporting, you’re not really creating articles that have information gain, as in you’re not doing anything new. Whereas if you’re adding something new to the conversation regularly, producing content and reporting on news that others are not reporting, you seem to have a much higher chance of not getting affected by algorithm updates.”

Barry Adams, a veteran search traffic expert and the founder of the SEO firm Polemic Digital

Are you looking at your analytics dashboard and noticing that search traffic to your stories is dramatically down? You’re not alone.

Over the past few months, news organizations have grappled with changes at Google that have led to a dramatic drop in organic search traffic. Publishers have been forced to navigate what appears to be seismic shifts in how Google doles out traffic, with the integration of artificial intelligence (which remains unintelligent and error-prone) causing panic attacks across the industry.

So clearly, Google has it in for publishers and is systematically depleting a source of web traffic that accounts for as much as 20% to 30% of a news organization’s online readership.

Or maybe there’s another explanation.

Barry Adams, a veteran search traffic expert and the founder of the SEO firm Polemic Digital, has also noticed a decline in search traffic among U.S. publishers. But instead of pointing the finger at Google specifically, Adams thinks most of the blame is on publishers themselves.

“I think a lot of them have been taking traffic from Google a bit for granted,” said Adams, who has worked with several big news brands over the years, including The New York Times and Fox News.

Adams’s thesis goes something like this: As the internet became increasingly popular, newspapers — with all their original reporting and brand reputation built over years of publishing — came to dominate Google’s search rankings, powered by all the links back to their content, known as its authority signal.

“As a news publisher, you could pretty much rank for anything. Any keyword, any search, if you had an article that was relevant about it, you would rank for that,” Adams said. “The Daily Telegraph, a proper, formal newspaper in the U.K., would be #1 on Google for the top 100 songs of all time. That shouldn’t happen. It’s not a music publication.”

That changed in March 2018, an event Adams called the “Newspocalypse.” That’s when Google began rolling out specific algorithms related to topic authority, first in the U.K. and then in the U.S. As Adams explained, newspapers like the Telegraph in England would rank for politics, world news and business rather than for music, cars or sports. Tabloids like The Daily Mail would rank high on celebrity and entertainment news but saw much of their non-entertainment news disappear from Google.

“Publishers were put in specific boxes for Google, which basically said, ‘You have topical authority on this but not on that. So, if you write about this, you will get your ranking. If you step outside of that box and write about something you’re not really known for and you’re not an established authoritative publisher, you’re just not going to rank for that anymore,’” Adams said. “That’s something that I feel has been a consistent part of Google algorithm updates ever since.”

Google only really admitted the existence of topic authority in May 2023, which it describes as a system “to understand the degree of expertise a publication has in particular areas.” One of the more prominent signals includes topic and location, like displaying The Tennessean for news on high school football in Nashville. Another is how often and prominently your reporting is cited by other publications, with Google adding a “Highly Cited” label to the content.

“Google themselves had to admit as part of their antitrust trial they’re not really good at understanding content, but they understand signals like links and clicks really well,” Adams said. “Google does look at click behavior. It knows which pages and websites you visit on the Chrome browser, and those signals also play a role in Google’s algorithm. But it’s especially the citations for major newspapers that carry the most weight in Google’s system.”

While these changes have been rolled out over the past five years, they really hit home for many news organizations in March, when Google began penalizing some publishers for trying to use their remaining topic authority to fuel content created by third parties, such as coupons and sports gambling. The search giant has manually punished some who refused to end potentially lucrative deals.

Adams also said in his experience working with news brands, the technical side is often overlooked and almost taken for granted — especially at large organizations. That includes issues with indexing and other behind-the-scenes problems that could confuse search engine crawlers. However, it also means having some SEO as part of your workflow to ensure every published article has the best chance of finding a search audience.

It’s more important than ever for news publishers to focus on the core essentials of SEO, especially as publishers based in England and India focus on the U.S. as a growth market. Adams said he has noticed these publishers tend to have more consistency in their approach to optimizing for search, including on the technical side.

“They are making pretty decent inroads into U.S. media markets and starting to compete with established news brands,” Adams said. “Then, instead of taking a hard look at themselves, U.S. publishers just blame it on Google and say Google is broken, whereas it’s probably something they can fix themselves if they just put more effort into optimizing their own website.”

So, where should news organizations start? Adams suggests logging into Google Search Console, which is free to access for anyone who verifies they are affiliated with a news organization’s website. It provides information on how Google crawls and indexes your website, including potential issues. You can also see what keywords your content serves up for in the console’s search performance report.

“It’s probably underutilized by most publishers, who don’t look at it often enough,” Adams said. “It’s just such a wealth of information.”

There are also a number of third-party tools publishers can turn to, such as SEO crawling tools that crawl your content the way Google would to see what crops up. Adams suggests specific tracking tools, such as NewzDash, which track your rankings in Google and tell you when your articles go up in the “Top stories” boxes and in the Google news verticals, “and more importantly, when they drop out,” so you can either refresh an article or publish something new to regain a top spot in search results.

The good news is that all news publishers, including start-ups, can improve and broaden their topic authority. But no gimmicks or keyword-loaded content will help. Google is trying to find ways to reward original, quality reporting, so Adams suggests doing as much quality reporting as you can on topics that align with your news organization’s editorial expertise. Try not to worry too much about search clicks, which should come in time.

Adams likes to sum that up in one term — information gain.

“If you’re just rereporting a lot of other reporting, you’re not really creating articles that have information gain, as in you’re not doing anything new,” Adams said. “Whereas if you’re adding something new to the conversation regularly, producing content and reporting on news that others are not reporting, you seem to have a much higher chance of not getting affected by algorithm updates.”

Rob Tornoe is a cartoonist and columnist for Editor and Publisher, where he writes about trends in digital media. He is also a digital editor and writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Reach him at robtornoe@gmail.com.