Why did Wirecutter drop heavily in Google Search?

Wirecutter dropped heavily in search visibility during the spring and summer of 2025. That was surprising given the high-quality, insightful, and thorough reviews content they publish (and have published over the years). In addition, it's a site within a site, and resides on the New York Times domain (which is a powerful news publisher).

In this video, I cover the situation, my analysis of the rankings drop, and explore several theories about what happened. For example, were Google reviews updates to blame, was it Google's 'Starkly different' algorithm or system at play, or was vertical expertise rewarded? I definitely noticed many smaller, niche publishers with reviews content surging as Wirecutter dropped. One thing is for sure, Wirecutter tanked in Google losing 69% of its search visibility over several months according to Sistrix data.

So join me as I explore a massive drop in rankings for one of the most authoritative sites on the web.

Blog post:

https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/wirecutter-drops-google-reviews-system/

Chapters:

00:00 Wirecutter drops in rankings heavily.

00:47 Finding the drop. And it was a big one.

01:14 Visibility trending tanks across all three tools.

02:26 3.6M queries dropped in the US alone.

03:29 AI Overviews and AI Mode drop.

04:44 Theories about what happened starting with Reviews updates.

05:44 Google's 'Starkly Different' algorithm/system.

07:13 Wirecutter wasn't alone. Many reviews sites have dropped.

08:18 Vertical expertise rewarded?

09:45 Closing thoughts.

Follow me on Twitter: https://x.com/glenngabe

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glenngabe/

I'm on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/glenngabe.bsky.social