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.

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If your site is using JavaScript to render content via client-side rendering then it's important to understand that most AI search platforms cannot currently see your content. That includes ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and others. In this video, I cover a case study of a site that wasn't ranking well across AI Search, how they were leveraging client-side rendering, how that was causing problems, and what the AI platforms could actually see. It's great example of how JavaScript-based content can cause problems beyond Google and Bing in AI search platforms that are rapidly growing. I also end with a list of action items for site owners that might be affected by this issue.

Blog post covering my case study:

https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/ai-search-javascript-rendering/

Chapters:

00:00 AI Search and JavaScript Rendering

00:50 An introduction to the case study.

01:25 Vercel's research about AI platforms and JavaScript rendering

02:52 First signs of trouble - Favicons and Citation Problems

04:30 Testing ChatGPT for JavaScript rendered content

05:40 Testing Perplexity for JavaScript rendered content

06:24 Testing Claude for JavaScript rendered content

07:52 What site owners can do now.

09:15 Don't use client-side rendering for ALL of your page content.

09:45 Yes, Google (Gemini) and Bing (Copilot) can render JavaScript just fine.

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Has AI Search taken over in July 2025? Is Google still important or should you just focus on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI search platforms? In this video, I explain how to set up AI Search tracking in Google Analytics 4 to view the difference between AI Search traffic compared to Google Search and organic search overall. After setting this up across many accounts, AI search accounts for under 1% of traffic, and under .5% for most sites I checked.I’ll also explain how ignoring Google Search could lead to a drop in quality, which could cause problems with Google’s broad core updates (as core updates can impact all areas of Google including AI Overviews and AI Mode).Blog post covering the topic: https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/ai-search-traffic-compared-to-google/

Chapters:

00:00 AI Search versus Google Search in 2025

00:46 A conversation with an IT executive about AI Search and the demise of Google.

02:20 How to set up AI search tracking in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

03:45 What I found when analyzing AI Search traffic compared to Google.

05:15 AI Search example: B2C

06:16 AI Search example: Niche news publisher

06:42 AI Search example: Health and medical

07:18 AI Search example: Smaller publisher

07:41 Google organic drives the most traffic (by a mile).

08:33 AEO, GEO versus SEO - Be careful.

09:40 Google broad core updates and the danger of ignoring Google search.

10:12 A strong SEO strategy covers most of what you need for AI Search.

11:10 All Google surfaces that can be impacted by broad core udpates.

12:18 AIOs and AI Mode can be impacted by Google's broad core updates.

12:50 Wrapping up - AI Search is important, but don't ignore Google.

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