PVLF 2025

Indian News Sites Adapt as Google Bans Sponsored Content

Indian news publishers adapt to Google's SEO policy updates by shifting branded content to separate URLs and reworking ad-led revenue strategies.
on Feb 19, 2025

Indian online news websites are seeking out new models for hosting branded content following Google's March 2024 "Core Updates and New Spam Policies," which prohibited paid content, product reviews, and coupon pages from being indexed in SEO results.

Even as publishers have totally ceased posting coupons in accordance with Google's branded content policy update, various other steps are being undertaken, like developing a fresh URL and having a distinct deals platform on the site itself.

"Google's policy change has been a serious blow for publishers, impacting our ad-led revenue model upon which we survive. We've secured a new URL. A new website with a name identical to ours coming up which will be hosted entirely for showcasing all sponsored posts," the digital head of a leading English daily explained to e4m.

Several news publishers have already registered the URLs and are in the process of rolling out "brand websites" to maintain their advertorial business, which generates up to one-third of their revenue.

A digital publisher said, "We've taken a 'no follow, no indexing' strategy for sponsored content, and developing a different URL for branded stories is just our initial step to counter losses from the new SEO policy."

Some of the publishers, including Hindustan Times, have re-engineered their user journeys and abandoned discrete URLs to be able to keep complete control of their branded content.

Several news publishers have already secured the URLs and are busy rolling out "brand websites" to support their advertorial business, which contributes up to one-third of their income.

One digital publisher said, "We've taken a 'no follow, no indexing' policy for sponsored content, and developing a new URL for branded stories is just our initial measure to counter losses due to the new SEO policy."

Others like Hindustan Times have rebuilt their user flow and ditched separate URLs in order to be able to completely control their branded content.

We have collaborated with brands to provide offers and branded content directly to our registered users on our website. We have been building this product for some time now including the development of an in-house transaction tech stack," says Puneet Jain, Chief Executive Officer - HT Digital.

Change in Google policy

e4m on Tuesday wrote about how online news publishers in India and around the world are facing an existential threat as Google stricter-enforces search indexing guidelines that further threatens to dismember the ad-based top-line revenue model numerous publishers depend upon.

On March 5th 2024, Google rolled out the combined Spam Policies and Core Update, the largest and longest core update in its history. With these updates, which lasted 52 days and concluded on April 19th, Google dramatically lowered the rankings of sites it deemed more concerned with search engine optimization than providing real value to human readers.

In the aftermath of this, Search visibility for the world's leading digital news publishers like Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and CNN has plummeted in recent times. Industry stakeholders aver, "News publishers were instructed to delist all paid content. Those who did not comply, saw their content get delisted by Google."

Some Indian news publishers also felt to have experienced a 25-30 percent drop in traffic in the last six months because of these changes. That lost traffic to news publishers collectively amounts to at least $7.5 million worldwide, based on the search visibility analytics company Sistrix.

This is a blow when publishers are already struggling with a fall in traffic because of Al-overviews offered by the search engines.

A Google spokesperson, though, asserted, "The March 2024 core update and our updated spam policies were part of our continued effort to fight the problem of spam and provide a great Search experience. Our policy is intended to make sure that users arriving at a site via Search get the content they're looking for. This policy update has helped bring the best search results forward and made sure that all sites have a fair shot at ranking based on the quality of their content. We remain working with publishers to support audience growth in all major areas. The GNI Indian Languages Program has helped 500+ publishers in nine languages over two years where they have realized a 32% increase in page views and a 39% increase in digital ad revenue."