How Wirecutter is switching up its content and audience strategy to tackle search changes

Leilani Han, Wirecutter’s director of commerce, said onstage at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Miami, Fla., last week that while it hasn’t become more difficult to convert readers to buy from Wirecutter’s product recommendations, the real challenge is finding those readers in the first place.

“Over the last few years, you’ve really seen [Wirecuter’s] evolution from being the gold standard in product recommendations to really becoming the gold standard in recommending what matters most,” Han said. “It’s allowed us to expand into different topics that we may not have been able to do so before, test into different formats, really innovate with product as well as it complementing our off-site strategy.”

Part of that also means testing more video from Wirecutter on YouTube, Han said.

Here’s what Wirecutter is doing to prepare itself for the new era of finding – and keeping – readers.

Expanding core coverage areas

Wirecutter has expanded its coverage into more service-oriented content. Ans it has changed how it packages up content too, from more standard headlines like “the best air purifier” to “how to protect your home’s air quality,” Han said.

She declined to share how Wirecutter’s traffic has been impacted by the changes to Google search, but said “it has been a journey.”

In terms of new content forms, during wildfire season this summer, for example, Wirecutter released an emergency preparedness package. It was driven by colleagues whose homes were either lost or severely damaged by wildfires. They shared their personal stories in short-form videos that were shared on social media.

“We’re really collaborating with the other audience heads [at The New York Times], as far as being able to take a look at what all the different themes and priorities are, [and] basically making pitches so that we can see ourselves come up in the right rail, or mobile app notifications and in other newsletters,” Han said.

Wirecutter has also invested “a ton” into what it calls discovery pieces this year, according to Han. Not all shopping guides have to be long pieces – some are quicker hits, such as “why I love this, or first-look pieces, or doing a hot take on some product that’s trending on Tiktok, or even very newsworthy information, such as… a product recall,” Han said. This has helped Wirecutter increase its visibility on Google Discover, she noted.

Diversifying revenue and traffic sources

Wirecutter is also focused on growing its newsletter subscriber lists and distributing more content on social to push readers down the conversion funnel, Han said.

“This also goes hand in hand with the audience strategy of making our advice and recommendations just a lot more personable and a lot more accessible,” Han said. 

She declined to share how much traffic was coming from newsletters, but that it was a “very meaningful portion, and it has dramatically increased over the last several years.” This strategy has also helped grow Wirecutter’s direct traffic, Han noted, though she declined to say by how much.

And this year, Wirecutter will pilot some video programming on YouTube. 

“We’ve been focused on [creating content that is] more condensed, more digestible, more approachable. But we know that there is still value in more longer-form ,” Han said. “We believe that it’s not only going to help us to expand our audience reach, but we believe in the long term, that’ll also help us in search,” she added. 

Now that more videos are surfacing in search – and YouTube is increasingly becoming a search engine in its own right – this strategy was a natural evolution, Han said. She teased there may come a time when Wirecutter’s YouTube videos are shoppable, too. 

Tweaking SEO strategy – but not yet investing in GEO

Wirecutter has also tweaked its SEO strategy to highlight its shift toward more personal recommendations.

“We’ve definitely observed that in the space of search results, it’s shifting more towards that storytelling, which is actually really at the heart of our overall shift in our content strategy – being more personable,” Han said.

Headlines are now reflective of first-person narratives, as consumer behavior has moved to more intent-based searches, Han said. Rather than suggesting the “best humidifier,” headlines read more like “how I was able to convert my 140 square foot Queens balcony into an outdoor oasis,” she said.

But Wirecutter isn’t diving into the world of optimizing for AI search platforms through GEO.

“The playbook doesn’t seem to be dramatically different from what we’re accustomed to,” Han said.

Making Wirecutter stickier with AI

Wirecutter – in a similar fashion to other publishers like Business Insider – also added generative AI technology to its search feature, last month.

Previously, its site search used keyword matching to recommend content. Now, it serves more as a “product finder,” which summarizes Wirecutter’s reporting on the topic and helps point readers to the product they’re looking for, Han said. This expanded into developing other on-site tools to make the Wirecutter site stickier and keep readers on the page.

Han also said the AI-powered search function has “definitely” improved click-throughs to its product recommendations, although she declined to share a specific growth figure.