Reminder: the FTC requires the disclosure to be “as close to the beginning of the content as possible” (according to Termly).
Tom Critchlow says he’s not (yet) implying causation but it’s interesting that Retrododo and Housefresh (who have both been incredibly vocal about their Google drops)… have their affiliate disclosures buried at the bottom of the page (where neither humans or Google are likely seeing them).
Anyway – Tom is not trying to call anyone out directly but just get a conversation going.
It’s a working theory, but some of the sites he would have expected to drop in HCU and didn’t are ones that had strong affiliate disclosures…
Whether or not affiliate disclosures specifically are a signal for Google, Tom’s hunch is that the “helpful content” framing is Google specifically trying to clean up results – NOT about how “helpful” the content is written.
(This is clearly true given the number of strong, well written sites that have disappeared from Google).
