The CEO said that Google’s algorithm updates had caused a sharp decline in financial product referral revenue, which is dependent on SEO.
Hard Bacon, a Montreal-based fintech startup that offered a free budgeting app and made money through lead generation and affiliate marketing for financial products, has shut down after seeing most of its Google traffic disappear over the past year following an update to the search giant’s algorithm.
Hard Bacon announced in a blog post on Aug. 15 that it plans to cease operations, lay off its remaining employees, and file for bankruptcy “in the coming days.”
The move comes 11 months after Google rolled out several anti-spam updates that caused a sharp decline in traffic to Hard Bacon’s website, a hit that the SEO-dependent company couldn’t recover from, co-founder and CEO Julien Breaux said in an interview with BetaKit.
“Not only did they kill off the really bad websites, they killed off a lot of the good websites as well.”
According to Brault, Hard Bacon lost 97% of its traffic from search engines since Google’s “helpful content update” in September 2023. While Google’s latest update has brought some of the company’s traffic back, Brault said that unfortunately, this latest change is too little, too late for Hard Bacon. “We’re still in a bad spot,” he said.
“It’s sad because for the last 11 months we’ve put ourselves in great financial difficulty,” Brodt added, noting that the startup is in the process of filing for bankruptcy. As of publication, the Hard Bacon app and website are still functioning, but Brodt noted that both could stop working in the coming weeks if the startup’s trustee stops paying its hosting fees.
According to Google, its helpful content system is “designed to better surface original, helpful content in search results that is written by people, for people, rather than content created primarily for the purpose of gaining search engine traffic.”
Google’s changes are designed to deprioritize unhelpful SEO-driven and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content, and affect a wide range of businesses that rely on SEO and online content, including Hardbacon, HouseFresh, New York Magazine, GQ, Urban Dictionary and Tuta Mail. “Not only did they kill the really bad websites, they killed a lot of the good websites as well,” Brault argued.
BetaKit reached out to Google for comment on Hardbacon’s claims, whether this influence over companies like Hardbacon was intentional, and what the company is doing to ensure websites that generate quality content don’t get caught up in AI content and other efforts to fight spam, but as of press time Google has not responded.
Brodt, a former publisher and business and technology journalist, co-founded Hard Bacon in 2017 as a platform for individual investors to analyze and manage their portfolios. After struggling to monetize the app through subscriptions, Brodt said the startup pivoted in 2020 to focus solely on the budgeting component it already offered, layering in financial product comparison tools and personal finance education content to attract consumers.
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“Our goal with Hard Bacon was to help little people get as much bang for their buck as possible,” Brault said.
Hard Bacon has been offering its budgeting app for free since 2020 and makes money through lead generation through SEO for financial institutions and affiliate marketing, collecting fees by connecting consumers to products such as credit cards, bank accounts, and insurance, as well as sponsored content. To date, Hard Bacon has raised a total of about 3 million Canadian dollars through crowdfunding from about 2,000 individual investors to advance this initiative.
The Hard Bacon app has 50,000 registered users, but the number of active users is much smaller because of the lack of open banking in Canada, and Brault said it has “plateaued” at about 2,000 because of difficulties connecting financial accounts so the app can monitor spending and savings. “The problem is we have a high dropoff rate because accounts keep disconnecting on a daily basis,” he said.
Before Google’s September 2023 update, which was completed on Sept. 28, Hard Bacon had 10 employees, according to Brault. In September, just before the update, the company had 400,000 unique visitors to its website and $55,000 in sales, he said.
According to Brault, Google’s September 2023 update and every change made to its search algorithm since then (except for the most recent one) has caused Hard Bacon to lose traffic from Google.
“In Google’s eyes, we looked like a spam site,” he said.
Brodt said HardBacon tried everything they could to solve the problem, including fixing SEO issues, improving content and the website, cutting costs and reducing staff, and over the course of months, the company was left with just Brodt and two other employees. HardBacon fired the two and ultimately decided to cease operations this month.
Hard Bacon’s story bears some similarities to that of Canadian-founded Apollo, a third-party app for browsing the online discussion platform Reddit, which also shut down last year in response to changes made by major tech companies. In Apollo’s case, changes to Reddit’s application programming interface (API) policies caused the app’s prices to rise.
Related: Reddit’s new API pricing leads to the shutdown of Canadian app Apollo
Breaux described Google’s search dominance as “highly problematic.” Google now owns more than 80% of desktop search engine market share worldwide, according to Statista, down slightly from 90% in 2019. Bing accounts for 10%, and the rest is spread among a variety of players. Breaux argued that because of this, Google “is the internet.”
“It’s not sustainable to have only one search engine on the Internet. If you have 90 percent market share, you effectively decide who can survive and do business on the Internet,” Brault said, adding that that’s why antitrust laws exist.
Making things even more bittersweet for HardBacon is the fact that in a landmark antitrust case south of the border, a U.S. judge recently ruled that Google acted illegally to maintain its monopoly in search. In a HardBacon blog post, Brault noted that this case and other pending litigation suggest that Google could lose its standing due to alleged anti-competitive behavior.
Brault claims he has already been approached by at least 20 credible potential buyers and is hopeful that HardBacon’s technology and content will survive in some form, but stresses that the matter is currently in the hands of HardBacon’s trustees.
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As for what the future holds, he said he doesn’t know at this point, noting he’s still in the bankruptcy process, but added that after that he’ll probably look for another job.
Brault said Hard Bacon considered all options, including introducing a subscription fee for the budgeting app. The CEO said Hard Bacon decided not to go that route because of past experiences, and he doubts it would make a difference.
“if [this] If it serves as a reminder to other entrepreneurs to diversify their marketing acquisition channels, then that’s a good thing.”
Since Hard Bacon announced the news earlier this month, some have argued that the startup is too focused on a single marketing acquisition channel, Brault noted.
Meanwhile, Brault said Hard Bacon has focused all its efforts on SEO and Google traffic because that’s where it’s most profitable, noting that this strategy has proven fruitful for the larger, Nasdaq-listed NerdWallet.
“Lead generation for financial institutions requires highly motivated people,” says Brault. “How do you find people who are motivated to buy a credit card or insurance? They’re on Google searching things like, ‘What is the cheapest insurance for single parents?'”
While Brault noted that in hindsight it’s easy to blame Hard Bacon for its focus on SEO, he also acknowledged that the outcome may have been different if the startup had diversified its approach: “In my next business, I won’t do one that requires me to rely completely on SEO. It’s a lesson for life,” he said.
“if [this] “If this serves as a reminder to other entrepreneurs to diversify their marketing acquisition channels, that’s a good thing,” Brault added.
Feature image provided by Hardbacon
