Martindale-Avvo’s Own Numbers Reveal Google is Eating Directories….

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Based on numbers put out by Internet Brands press releases, my back of the napkin calculations suggest Avvo has lost approximately 60% of their website traffic over the past 4 years.

I’ve long been (incorrectly) prognosticating that Google will start to remove Directories from the SERPS, as directories are rarely more than a conduit to the end businesses anyway and deliver very little (if any) actual value to consumers. While it doesn’t seem the organic listings have fundamentally changed to remove or reduce directory presence; their overall impact has been massive reduced by the reworking of the SERPs – put simply, SEO has been depreciated – now hiding below LSAs, Google Ads, and Google Local.

Looking through Internet Brand’s press releases from when Avvo was acquired 2018, there are two different releases the point to roughly 8 million monthly sessions to Avvo. The first, from January ’18, quotes Avvo as having “more than 100 million annual visits” – which translates to roughly 8 million monthly. The second from October of that year, quotes the combined entities of IB (including Nolo, Lawyers.com, Attorneys.com, TotalAttorneys, AllLaw and a smattering of other publishers) as having 25 million monthly sessions – assuming Avvo has roughly 1/3 of that traffic (I’m pulling that % out of the air, based on my recollection of relative marketshare while I was there) you end up with again, roughly 8 million sessions.

Now fast forward to today… and the LinkedIn profile of the Chief Executive for Martindale-Avvo:

Martindale-Hubbell and Avvo – the largest online legal marketplace in the country… serving 10+ million consumers visiting avvo.com, lawyers.com, and martindale.com every month and tens of thousands of attorneys ready to serve them.

Assuming the makeup of the IB directory mix hasn’t changed – apply 1/3 to that 10 million and you’re talking just over 3M monthly sessions – a 60% decline and traffic back to roughly where it was when I was there over a decade ago. Now it’s very possible we are comparing apples and oranges here or that the expected PR puffery during the acquisition was grossly overstating actual numbers. I simply don’t know. But, this all comes back to my theory that Google will disinter-mediate the directories, which they have done by changing the SERPs towards more of an ad driven model and possibly reducing directory presence within organic itself.

For more on how and why I pieced these numbers together:

Martindale-Hubbell Aggressively Marketing Their LinkSpam Network

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Psssst…buddy…you…with the struggling website…yeah you. Want to buy a link? How about 5? I’ve got some nice, hot, untraceable links right here in my coat.

In the past 10 days, I’ve received questions from three different legal marketing agencies about Martindale’s new SEO product: The Martindale-Nolo legal marketing network which includes Nolo and Lawyers.com. It’s essentially a mass purchased linkbuilding scheme and people want to know: does this violate Google’s SEO guidelines against LinkSpam.

Short Answer: Yes it does.

But first, let’s hear from Martindale directly:

 

Hmmm…key messages are:

“providing stronger link value…helps increase links through our legal network of websites…help you gain higher search engine rankings”

Also…it’s “affordable” – meaning it’s paid. Isn’t this the flagrant buying and selling of links? Yes it is.

FindLaw Linkspam Provides Historical Context

Back in 2008 Findlaw got exposed for doing exactly this: mass emailing their clients with the offer of purchased links. This was called their: SEM-C product which enabled customers to purchase links and even specify the anchor text (remember anchor text?). You can find a copy of it here. This program got blown up quickly and received widespread backlash among the knowledgable (albeit small back then) legal online marketing community.

So, I didn’t think anyone would be so stupid as to replicate this experiment. Apparently I was wrong. Another variant of Martindale’s marketing materials states:

“This helps increase links through our legal network of websites and directories back to your firms website. Gaining stronger authority and helping you gain higher search engine rankings.”

Google Guidelines Violation

Does this really violate Google Guidelines?  Yup. Yup and Yup. Read excerpts of those guidelines below and ask yourself if there’s any possible way Martindale isn’t setting themselves and their clients up for failure:

  • This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.
  • Buying or selling links that pass PageRank.
  • This includes exchanging money for links or using automated programs or services to create links to your site.

Note the key concern for law firms here is that these penalties impact not only the seller, but also the buyer of said links.

The Avvo Question

Now speaking of legal directory links, I’d be remiss in noting that AVVO recently sold to Internet Brands, who is also the owner of…Martindale. Back in July of this year, I reported that Avvo was removing contact information unless one purchased Avvo Premium. It was unclear if this included a link to the website. It’s also unclear if Martindale’s “network of legal websites” extends to Avvo as well, but it’s not too hard to connect these dots. I did reach out to the new Avvo people to discuss this further, but they demurred. On a personal level, I’d find it tragically ironic if Avvo is included within this scheme.

So…what’s going to happen?

If history repeats itself, all of these sites (both the sellers and buyers) may have a negative impact on their search traffic. According to the SEO rumor mill, the FindLaw link selling scandal generated a significant and protracted decline in traffic – although I frankly didn’t hear any rumblings of how this impacted the purchasers of said links. Granted that was way back in 2008, but I don’t suspect Google has gotten specifically dumber as it pertains to linkspam over the past decade. Further note that Google relies heavily on algorithmic learning and have been seeking out link networks for about 15 years now. Hiding this network from Google, especially with the large and prolific footprint of Martindale/Nolo/Lawyers.com (and hopefully not Avvo) would be extremely difficult. All Google needed was the linkbuilding smoking gun…an offer to sell links. And apparently, Martindale has just mass emailed that smoking gun to all of their customers (including agency owners who know better.)