The business news publisher Forbes announced a sweeping round of layoffs on Friday, which will affect roughly 5% of its total workforce.

A representative for the company confirmed the reductions.

In a note shared with staff internally, the newly appointed chief executive Sherry Phillips blamed financial underperformance for the cuts.

“Unfortunately, as most of you know, we didn’t meet our financial goals in 2024,” Phillips wrote. “As a result, we are reprioritizing resources and reorganizing some areas to further increase efficiency and laser focus on the core strength of our brand. We’ve made the difficult decision to eliminate some roles across the business, which comprise less than 5% of our workforce.”

The layoffs follow on the heels of several similar announcements from other media firms. Vox Media, Condé Nast, CNN, The Washington Post, and Dotdash Meredith have all reduced headcount in the past two months.

The reductions also come against the backdrop of major shifts in the landscape of search traffic, spurred by an update made by Google to its Site Reputation Abuse (or SRA) policy in October.

Beginning this summer, a number of premium publishers began seeing the search traffic to their affiliate arms plummet overnight. Forbes was the most heavily impacted of the affected publishers, in part because it had built one of the most robust affiliate programs in the media ecosystem.

The updated SRA policy, along with changes to search traffic prompted by the proliferation of artificial intelligence, have led dozens of publishers to lose a substantial portion of their organic traffic. This loss in traffic translates to declines in advertising, affiliate, and subscription revenues.

The drop-off in traffic and the layoffs are both playing out as Forbes continues its effort to sell itself to the private equity arm of Koch Inc. for around $570 million. A substantial loss in organic traffic and its attendant revenue could impact those discussions.