Ziff Davis said referrals from unpaid Google search results fell about 37% year over year in the third quarter of 2026. Chief Executive Vivek Shah gave the figure on the November 6 earnings call. Ziff Davis is the New York-based digital media and software company that publishes PCMag and IGN. Its separately reported third-quarter results showed revenue from continuing operations fell 5.6% to $289.3 million.
Those percentages measure different things. The first measures traffic referred by a single source to the company’s properties. The second measures sales across businesses that also earn money from subscriptions, software licenses and other sources. Ziff Davis disclosed several reasons for the revenue decline. Its numbers show how much came out of each revenue category, with no dollar figure for the Google referral loss alone.
Jump to a section
Two years of Google referral losses, compounded
Shah put the prior year’s third-quarter referral decline at roughly 23%. Set referrals in the third quarter of 2024 to 100. That gives an index of 77 for the same quarter of 2025. The subsequent 37% decline applies to those 77 referrals and puts the third quarter of 2026 at about 49. The two reported declines imply a loss of roughly 51% over two years. The index uses rounded changes supplied by management and does not imply that Ziff Davis disclosed visit counts.
Shah said technology and shopping were hit harder than gaming and entertainment. The call offered no site-level referral figures or U.S.-only traffic split. The 37% describes Ziff Davis’s reported experience across its properties. It cannot establish how much traffic a particular title lost or how the company’s experience compares with a U.S. publisher whose audience comes from a different mix of sources.
Where the $17.2 million revenue decline landed
The quarterly report filed with the SEC puts the decline in advertising and performance marketing at $15.4 million. That category includes advertising and marketing services, so it covers a wider business than display ads sold against search visits. Subscription and licensing revenue fell $2.8 million, while other revenue rose $1 million. The year-over-year comparison covers continuing operations and excludes the divested Connectivity business in both periods.
Advertising and performance marketing accounts for about nine-tenths of the net decline on this breakdown. The largest drop in that category was $8.3 million in Health & Wellness, where the company cited its professional lines of business. Technology & Shopping lost $6 million in the same category. Ziff Davis said traffic pressure affected affiliate commerce and display advertising there. Gaming & Entertainment lost $1.2 million in the category, with the company citing a weaker slate of game releases. The quarterly report describes different forces inside the same companywide line.
| Revenue category | Change | What the filing establishes |
|---|---|---|
| Advertising and performance marketing | −$15.4M | Largest declines in Health & Wellness and Technology & Shopping |
| Subscription and licensing | −$2.8M | Separate from advertising and performance marketing |
| Other revenue | +$1.0M | Partly offsets the declines |
| Total | −$17.2M | From $306.5M to $289.3M |
Why the Technology & Shopping numbers are smaller than the traffic drop
The earnings presentation puts total Technology & Shopping revenue at $82.0 million, down 3.8%. Inside that total, the filing describes a $10.3 million decline in advertising and performance marketing in the technology businesses. Growth of $1.6 million in the shopping businesses and $2.7 million from a business bought in 2026 brought the decline for that category to $6 million. Higher subscriptions, licensing and other revenue narrowed the segment’s overall decline further.
That revenue mix is why the segment’s sales decline can sit alongside a larger search traffic loss. The totals include revenue earned in other ways, as well as revenue from a newly acquired business. The cleanest link in the filing is that traffic pressure affected affiliate commerce and display advertising in Technology & Shopping. Ziff Davis did not break out what share of that pressure came from Google’s search features, ranking changes or other factors.