After Lofgren’s article was published, experts began noticing a sharp drop in Forbes Advisor’s search traffic. Glenn Gabe, another SEO expert, shared graphs on X that showed a significant drop in search queries and rankings for the site.
He reported that more than 1.7 million queries lost positions or were completely removed from search results, which is a clear sign of either manual action or algorithmic changes.
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Google Penalty on Forbes Advisor: Understand What Happened
Forbes Advisor traffic drops. Source:X.
The decline was particularly evident in areas such as credit cards, insurance and healthcare, sectors that generate high volumes of traffic and, consequently, substantial revenue for Forbes Advisor.
This abrupt change made it clear that Google was taking steps to enforce its policies more strictly, especially on sites that abuse the reputation of strong domains.
The relationship between Google and manual penalties
Manual penalties are a tool used by Google to ensure that websites viber data follow its quality guidelines. Unlike algorithmic changes, which affect all websites automatically, manual penalties are applied individually after a human review.
In the case of Forbes Advisor, the penalty appears to be related to the abuse of parasitic SEO practices, where content is produced without direct supervision from the company that owns the domain.
This practice has been described as a problem by Google's own team, which mentions in its spam guidelines that “third-party pages are published with little or no oversight from the original owner.”
In this Forbes Advisor situation, although Forbes owned a stake in the business, management of the operation was largely in the hands of Forbes Marketplace, a separate entity that used the brand to generate traffic and revenue.
Impacts on the SEO market
The Forbes Advisor penalty serves as a warning to companies that use SEO practices to gain a competitive advantage in search results.
Google is increasingly aware of practices that prioritize profit over the quality of information provided to users. In this example from Forbes Advisor, the rapid rise and fall demonstrates that abusing SEO practices can generate short-term gains, but can also result in severe penalties and long-term losses.
Furthermore, this situation raises questions about the sustainability of business models based on parasitic SEO. Forbes Advisor’s growth was impressive, but also unsustainable, as Google eventually detected and punished practices that did not comply with its guidelines.
For other businesses that rely on SEO to drive traffic, this is a reminder that following Google’s guidelines is essential to ensuring the longevity and credibility of your operations.
The role of digital agencies
This episode highlights the importance of having a digital marketing agency that understands Google's guidelines and can implement effective SEO strategies without resorting to risky practices.
Many companies do not have the necessary knowledge to evaluate the quality of the SEO strategies implemented on their websites, which can lead to unexpected penalties, as happened with Forbes Advisor.