Google's Algorithm Is Turning Original Journalism Into Zero Sum Game for Small Publishers

The digital publishing industry is collapsing, and Google’s role in this demise is undeniable. Once a partner to publishers, Google has become a force that prioritises algorithms, AI, and revenue at the expense of quality journalism. For lifestyle publishers, the situation has reached a breaking point. Producing original, meaningful stories and having them seen is now nearly impossible.

This decline has been years in the making, with the nose dive accelerating since August 2023. Editorial teams across Australia, from Carsales to LadBible, have been gutted as organic Google traffic — the lifeblood for many publishers — disappears. For some, traffic declines have reached a staggering 90%. For lifestyle publishers, organic traffic was essential to keeping journalists employed and high-quality stories in production. Its loss has been catastrophic.

Mike Sinclair, former Editor-in-Chief of Carsales, captured the early warning signs of Google’s dysfunction:

“There were early clues that things were not as Google intended… The once-vaunted ’news’ status that publishers sought to achieve as it guaranteed better visibility to search became a lottery as long ago as 2020. When you could engage Google’s scant number of local staff, they could not triage why a site that complied with every item on the internet giant's ‘must have’ list would not gain a ‘news’ label. Google’s response — spend more on SEM…”

This anecdote illustrates the futility of trying to navigate Google’s utterly opaque systems. Even when publishers followed Google’s every guideline, there were no guarantees of visibility. Instead, the solution was always the same: spend more money.

The Reddit Surge and Its Implications

In late 2023, Google implemented the "Hidden Gems" update, aiming to surface content from forums and user-generated platforms. This change led to a significant increase in search visibility for sites like Reddit and Quora. Reddit, for instance, experienced a 378% increase in search visibility according to Semrush data, and an even more astonishing 978% growth as per Sistrix data.

While this shift benefited platforms like Reddit, it inadvertently marginalised traditional publishers. As user-generated content gained prominence in search results, professionally produced journalism, especially from lifestyle publishers, was pushed further down the rankings. This decline in visibility has had severe repercussions for traffic and revenue.

What was most insane was how someone decides that the voices of many in a disorganised and sometimes dangerous unmoderated environment was more trustworthy than a publisher with 10 years experience in a specific field.

Only within the past month have we seen a slight decline in Reddit dominance in search queries.

We’re Working With A System That Rewards the Wrong Players

Google’s updates over the past two years, including the Helpful Content and Core Updates, have destroyed small and medium-sized publishers while rewarding major players like Forbes and News Corp. These large publishers dominate search results regardless of what they publish, while smaller publishers like DMARGE are pushed further into obscurity.

What’s worse is that Google doesn’t seem to know how to fix the mess it created. At a recent gathering at Google HQ, representatives admitted they “don’t know what went wrong” and acknowledged it would take time to resolve the issues.

The image below illustrates how DMARGE broke a news story in Formula 1, yet it's only shown to a finite number of people. This 'throttling' of small publiushers by Google is what's killing reach and audience growth.

Their responses to publisher questions were vague and avoided specifics. There seems to be a focus on temporary, surface-level solutions to issues with the ranking algorithm, but no substantial changes, likely due to Google's fear of breaking systems or enabling spammers. Their advice? "Keep creating good content" felt dismissive, especially as many are struggling to stay afloat.

“The tenets of relevancy, recency and reliability seem to have gone out the window with social distancing and face masks…” Sinclair added, highlighting how far Google has drifted from the principles that once underpinned its search engine.

Instead of rewarding quality journalism, Google’s algorithms increasingly favour low-value, high-volume content churned out by content farms. Indian content mills, often identifiable by unpronounceable bylines, dominate search results with stories designed to game the system. For publishers that prioritise originality and depth, competing with these tactics feels like abandoning everything they stand for.

Google has compounded these challenges with its shift to 100% machine-based evaluations of websites and content, abandoning its human evaluation process previously managed by Appen. Human evaluators brought context, nuance, and the ability to recognise quality and originality—qualities that machines simply cannot replicate.

SEO Expert Lily Ray recently tweeted, “Google is laser-focused on identifying which content they believe was "written for search engines," and doesn't help searchers. Whether or not they get this right continues to be up for debate.”?

Try as they might, but Google’s new approach doesn't seem to be working for anyone. Barry Adams from Polemic Digital shared data from SISTRIX yesterday, which indicates that even the big guys are feeling the pinch from organic search, with most publishing sites losing visibility in Google UK last year.

“It's a tough space to maintain traffic, let alone grow it. Even the biggest brands aren't immune, steadily losing visibility in Google's organic ecosystem.”?

Barry adds, “Discover picks up a lot of the slack for many publishers, but the unpredictability of this channel makes it very risky to rely on. It's a popular feature but one that's not in any way core to Google's offering. It could be turned off at any moment.”

This algorithmic approach prioritises scale and keyword optimisation over thoughtful, well-crafted content.?

Even when DMARGE breaks stories or produces high-quality editorial, the algorithm favours mass-market players like The Times of India, Forbes, News.com.au, and Daily Mail, who dominate Google News through sheer volume. For smaller publishers, it feels like fighting a losing battle and one that’s no longer worth the investment.?

Skimming, Snippets, and AI: The New Normal

Adding to the problem is Google’s aggressive shift toward rich snippets and AI-driven overviews. These features extract answers directly from publishers’ content and present them prominently in search results, reducing the need for users to click through to the original article.?

What was once a system designed to drive traffic to publishers' websites has morphed into one where Google siphons the content’s value, leaving publishers with fewer page views, declining revenue, and an increasing sense that their work is being devalued—or worse, outright stolen.

For publishers, the implications are devastating. Content creation is a labour- and cost-intensive process, requiring skilled writers, editors, and fact-checkers. But with Google’s AI and snippets scraping key points or summarising entire articles, the reward for this effort is evaporating. Users get the information they need at a glance, and publishers- who feed the machine are cut out of the loop entirely.

What’s more, these features often strip away the human element of the content. How often do you see an author's byline in the hundreds of AI overviews and rich snippets that Google displays daily? Virtually never. The people behind the words—the journalists, experts, and writers—are rendered invisible. Instead, the content is anonymised and reduced to a sterile, algorithm-generated excerpt. This erases the creators and undermines their authority and the trust they’ve built with readers.

The result is a scenario where Google reaps the benefits of publishers’ hard work without fairly compensating them. The rich snippets and AI overviews may enhance the user experience by delivering instant answers, but they fundamentally shift the balance of power away from content creators. Instead of driving readers to a publisher’s site where they can engage with the full story, discover more content, or support the brand, Google keeps users within its ecosystem.

This dynamic has broader ramifications for the future of journalism. By prioritising speed and convenience over depth and engagement, Google is conditioning users to value information in bite-sized chunks, discouraging them from seeking out the full story or exploring nuanced, in-depth reporting. For lifestyle publishers who thrive on long-form storytelling, visual inspiration, and authoritative voices, this shift threatens to erase their relevance entirely.

A Bleak Future for Niche Journalism?

The fallout is undeniable. High-quality niche publishers across the web have seen their audiences decimated. DMARGE, which has been producing thoughtful, in-depth content since 2010, has felt this decline firsthand. In September 2024, we removed over 5,000 articles after a year-long audit to improve site quality. Yet, even after this massive effort, visibility remains low.

Frankly, the future doesn’t look great.. Google continues to reward big players and content farms, leaving independent publishers to fend for themselves in a system that seems rigged against them. For DMARGE and others like us, the halcyon days of reliable web traffic and new readers are over for now. The race to the bottom is here — and without drastic change, it’s a race we may all lose.

Niche publishers exist for a reason: they provide in-depth, expert insight and unique storytelling that simply cannot be replicated by larger outlets or user-generated forums. By taking on specialised topics and speaking directly to their passionate audiences, these publishers keep journalism vibrant, diverse, and genuinely reflective of the communities they serve.?

If they continue to be undervalued or driven out of visibility, we risk losing a vital source of innovation and authenticity in the media landscape. Their dedication to original reporting and thoughtful analysis deserves to be recognised — and rewarded — so that quality journalism can flourish in all its rich, nuanced forms.