During the 2020 pandemic, many publishers rushed into the product review space because they viewed affiliate revenue as low-hanging fruit. The problem was that most approached it as little more than an SEO game, assuming they’d be rewarded with free Google traffic whenever consumers researched products.

Instead, many were in for a rude awakening. They were all competing for the same handful of top search positions, and it was difficult to stand out when much of the content felt interchangeable.

To make matters worse, Google quickly caught on and updated its algorithms to penalize sites that were essentially aggregating reviews from Amazon and other user-generated platforms. In some cases, it even removed entire ecommerce verticals from search results when it determined publishers were operating outside their areas of expertise.

Wirecutter, by contrast, benefited from producing entirely original content and building a legitimate consumer brand. Many users search for some variation of “Wirecutter + product category,” which not only signals quality to Google’s recommendation algorithms but also leads to much higher affiliate conversion rates.