Are niche sites dead?

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Hey there, and welcome again to Growth Grind, the newsletter that aspires to educate, inspire, intrigue, question and tickle your marketing mind - towards the best SEO, AI, marketing and growth tips to grow your online venture.

Today’s SEO tip is quick and simple. We focus on the question that has led to hundreds of threads on Reddit; “Are niche sites dead?”

Less than two years ago, niche sites were flying, and valuations for selling these sites were ranging between 30x-50x of monthly revenue. In most cases, the niche sites were basically content sites monetized by affiliate marketing offers and display ads.

Then the Google algorithm updates started coming out and hitting these sites every other month. Now the charts for these sites look like this today:

Niche site A

Niche site B

Niche site C

In our investigation, we have found that all through this period of crushing Google updates, there are sites that survived, and yes, they are not niche sites.

Site A: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business

Site B: Service based business (marketing agency)

Site C: Ecommerce business

In summary, in 2025, the websites that are thriving are basically content heavy ecommerce, service-based, and software websites - or big media sites as well as forums like Quora and Reddit.

You can no longer launch a website to produce content, rank it, and generate revenue sustainably using organic search engine traffic. At one point, a Google algorithm update will find you, and kill your website.

In our portfolio of 15 niche sites only 2 survived over the last 2 years. Those 2 had pivoted to a service based business model a few months before the Google algorithm updates happened.

So are niche sites dead? Short answer, yes, if you are going to rely on organic search engine traffic, and no, if your source of traffic is the alternative (Google ads, Facebook ads, Pinterest ads, etc).

What do you think? Are you launching any niche sites this year? What strategies are you putting in place to ensure long term sustainability? If you are a business that got hit by the Google algorithm updates, let us know and maybe we will take a look and provide a tip or just learn something from it.

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Until next week,
Have a good one.