When I researched the reviews last week, I noticed that Wirecutter in Google did not rank so well. And they did not stop at all for some questions. Therefore, I dug more to better understand their visibility in 2025. Note that this year we had two wide core updates, including the Core update in March 2025, and most recently the Core update in June 2025. So I wanted to see how Wirecutter emerged in these powerful updates.
What I saw shocked me. One picture is more than a thousand words, so here the visibility of wirecutter has been since the spring of 2025. Note the two large drops of visibility (first on May 18 and then another decline on July 20, right after the core core update in June). When comparing the current visibility with May 2025, Wirecutter has dropped by a whopping 69% based on Sistrix data, 72% based on Ahrefs data and 65% based on SEMRUSH data. Sure, it has dropped in certain places in the past, but it has dropped sharply in the several months.
This was incredibly surprising because I always thought that Wirecutter represented extremely thorough and detailed reviews and I know that they have (mostly) classified very well over time. I even mentioned Wirecutter in my contributions to Google’s evaluation updates as an example of imitation.
Has Wirecutter really dropped? Check visibility and ranking lists.
Wirecutter, who drops a lot, is a big deal if you concentrate on reviews because it offers many contents of Killer reviews. But … they cover a wide range of categories and products. I’ll cover more about it soon.
But before I went crazy about the overall waste, I wanted to recognize the Serps for the queries that were traps or lost. First, Ahhrefs showed that a whopping 3.6 -m queries in the United States had either dropped in the USA or were lost in Google when they were compared at six months today. This is crazy.
Sometimes Abirecutter disappeared from the top 100, while it sometimes lowers the number one ranking on page 1. But one thing was certain … it fell and in many questions.
The marginal note, AI overviews and AI mode are also influenced:
While I treated in an earlier contribution, Site owners should very carefully concentrate with the AI search and ignored ignoring Google. If the quality falls, a website is susceptible to be approached by a wide core update (or other types of algorithm updates). And since the majority of the traffic still comes from Google, this is a dangerous game. Remember that the AI search leads less than 1% of traffic to most locations (with most locations below 0.5%).
As you suspect, Wirecutter does not appear as often in AI overviews or AI mode for the queries I tested (which makes sense). Note that they were queries where Wirecutter fell off in the past few months. Remember that both AIOS and AI mode are rooted in Google’s core quality and ranking systems. So if a site reduces visibility due to a large algorithm update (or another change by Google), the AIOS and AI mode should follow.
Here are, for example, two queries in which Wirecutter has ranked well in front of the drops in the 10-blue links. Wirecutter does not appear in AI mode to this day:
And Gemini also uses Google’s search systems so that it can also be cited there as a source. I have to dig out of Wirecutter in more inquiries to see how they appear in Gemini now, but I wanted to mention that. And I also have to dig deeper with AI search platforms such as chatt, confusion, Claude etc. to see how well abirencutter ranks there.
Rated updates, “very different” and an increase in vertical reviews:
So what exactly is going on here? First, the evaluation updates are carried out behind the scenes and are not announced by Google. That started in November 2023, as Google explained This was the final review update that would be officially announced.
However, this did not mean that she ended … on the contrary, Google explained that the checking system “regularly and continuously” would be updated. In addition, Danny Sullivan Explained in 2024 That the review system was often updated. So the drops for wirecutter could have been during one of these review system updates.
Second, last year I wrote a post entitled “A Nightmare in the Affiliate Street”, in which I reported how a series of websites with affiliate sections recharge with affiliate. I speculated that Google may have been edited algorithmically with the reputation abuse of site. Well, Google sent me an explanation that explained that this was not the case. This is the first time that they mentioned the “strongly different” algorithm (or the system) where they worked and improve.
Here Google could understand algorithmically if a section of the content is “very different” from most main content on the website. And if this happens, the section would not use the signals as present as other sections. In this case, this section could fall strongly in ranking lists. It is not a punishment, it is only that the section would not use the power of the location as it would normally do.
At Wirkutter, Google could treat the Wirkutter directory differently than the Kern website in New York Times. To say safely, but possible.
This was what it looked like on two different websites when Google 2024 improved “very different” system:
Wirecutter was not alone. Other websites that focused on reviews have also dropped.
The Wirkutter Drop led me to lead the visibility figures for over 700 websites that I have documented and which were influenced in the past by evaluation updates. I wanted to see how these websites went over time and especially websites similar to Wirecutter. For example, if checking content was accommodated in a section of a larger and wider website.
First, many of these evaluation websites have been checked since then whether updates (and product evaluation updates) were started for the first time in 2021. I covered some of them in my contribution on the effects of review updates over time. Sure, some are up, but many are below – and really below. See some examples below. There are many such.
Vertical specialist knowledge rewarded? Niche publishers with checks.
I also started thinking that Google could implement a change in the review system that rewarded vertical specialist knowledge? Ie -website concentrate strongly on the verticals that you can use to publish reviews (compared to Mammut website, which cover a number of topics). Again I saw many of these smaller publishers appearing in my research while I analyzed the Wirkutter drop. I will contact Google to Google to see if you can throw some light on what is going on here.
For example, there are niche publishers with ratings that rose in 2025:
When Wirecutter sinks, pay attention to Affiliate marketers:
Wirecutter was difficult to see in 2025 was surprising for me. Here, too, you have published some of the most detailed content of the reviews over the years. Nevertheless, they publish content in many different categories … and the increase in the niche publishers with reviews during my research was interesting to see. So reviews have been updated, the cause of the decline, was Google’s “very different” algorithm or was vertical know -how rewarded? It is difficult to say, but I will turn Google to Google to determine whether you can share information on the effects that I focus on publishers on the content of the reviews I see. Stay tuned.
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