ABOUT, INC.
NEW YORK, NY

," here's an unexpected bright spot: The nearly 20-year-old brand About.com has come back from the dead. The growth came after the company deliberately tore down its old site, gutting much of its musty, early 2000s content, replacing it over the past two years with five entirely new brands. It all makes for an unexpected comeback story in a medium not known for second chances. Still, what exactly was the company thinking? CEO Neil Vogel told Business Insider that when he recommended to management a full About.com teardown a few years ago — including to chairman Barry Diller — he warned them of the risks. And he also told them that it was possible that About.com could end up going under if they didn't do something drastic. The site was something of a circa 2000 relic. It featured service content designed to get picked up in Google searches along the lines of "how long to grill steak" or "should I open an IRA" for just about every topic under the sun. The old About. "The algorithms didn't like our content anymore," Vogel said. "And we did a pretty good job of making advertisers not want to touch us." So the teardown was needed. Over the past two years, the About team took the site's content from roughly a million or so articles to a few hundred thousand. During that time, the publisher ditched the About brand and rolled out five distinct new publications to replace it: Our proprietary data and targeting platform helps you reach your audience at the moment they need you most — their moment of intent. Demographics tell you who someone is. Magellan can tell you what that person cares about.