While contributors are at the mercy agencies, websites are at the mercy of Google, specifically their Search Algorithm. In February 2017, Google tweaked their algorithm that ranks website search placement. After the change, some websites saw positive impact and some saw negative impact.

This change unfortunately affected nearly all microstock websites. Google�s Quality Rater Guidelines were updated and adjusted how they rate User Engagement. One of the new penalties of the change was excessive pagination. Websites with excessive pagination was penalized for low-quality engagement and we all know every Microstock website has lots and lots of pagination.

Here is a list of the prominent Microstock websites:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/shutterstock.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/123rf.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/istockphoto.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/fotolia.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/dreamstime.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/gettyimages.com

Notice the dip in February after the algorithm change. Some websites are making a recovery, but some like SS, 123RF, DT have not. It's not an easy problem to solve for microstock agencies since they require a lot of pagination.

For me shutterstock and fotolia is showing progress, there may be algorithm change from google but every business do not depends on alexa ranking or google.

Alexa doesn't affect anything really. They just report how much traffic a website has compared to other websites. Every website listed saw a drop in traffic right after Google changed their search algorithm. So yes, website do rely on Google quite a bit for new traffic.

My sales hasn't dropped much, but I'm sure others has seen larger drops. Not all experiences are alike and I'm getting a general feeling that sales has dropped for a lot of people recently.

Yes, alexa shows the traffic stats, one cannot entirely depend on it and it cannot be ignored either. There are many more things involved like conversion rate, customer base, online / offline marketing and strategic planning.

SS showed good quarterly result time and Adobe is also aggressively moving forward.
Though other brands like 123rf, DM etc are falling off.

It's hard to know what's happening with Adobe Stock. Not many websites can track the traffic of sub-domains like stock.adobe.com. While FT saw a drop in traffic, Adobe Stock could be doing great. Sales are good, so they must be doing something right.

@ minsc  Thanks for posting this. Very interesting.

Very interesting... I have seen my sales sink this year... it doesn't make this less painful, but it all makes sense now.