The downfall of G2's SEO has to be studied 😳

The SEO “game” has really changed in a big way. I’m not picking on G2 but their downfall HAS to be studied.

I’ve written extensively about G2 in the past. They are a fascinating SEO case study with a lot of history we can all learn from.

For the purpose of this teardown, I’ll be examining the downfall of learn.g2 pages from peak levels on Jan 20th, 2026 compared to today.

Their programmatic SEO category pages declined by 85%

First, a little history for context.

Back in 2023-2024, they relied on programmatic SEO to rank for [X best software] searches to drive traffic to their vendor listing and comparison pages.

But the game has changed drastically since then, and they’ve lost 852,000 visits to those pages, or an 85% decline.

“Best Webinar Platforms for B2B”

In this example, the ranking URL would be: /categories/webinar/enterprise

They got destroyed by the helpful content update and never recovered

The downfall of g2.com/categories path appears to be directly aligned with the helpful content update that rolled out in September 2023.

This update was largely a crackdown on 3rd party content that penalized SEO-first, unhelpful material.

Google began prioritizing “hand-crafted” buyer’s guides

The helpful content update marked a new era of “people-first” content with an emphasis on “EEAT” which is a requirement for content to demonstrate first-hand experience and expertise.

I called this out a few years ago in an SEO audit I did for a G2 competitor.

This was a devastating blow for aggregator websites like G2 that relied heavily on programmatic content to drive traffic for software reviews.

🚨 What happens next is fascinating 🚨

G2 started producing their own version of “hand-crafted” review pages

Their goal was for “hand-crafted” content to outrank the programmatic pages.

• URL: /best-webinar-software/

• Title: “I Tested 11 Best Webinar Software: My Hands-On Review”

These pages follow “best practices” and check all the tactical SEO boxes:

• has first person language to demonstrate “experience”

• has all the hallmarks of “helpful” content

• has key takeaways with “my verdict”

• has “best for X” use cases

• has “unbiased” tone and vibe

• has HTML comparison tables

• has validated schema markup

• has FAQs with structured data

• has links to G2 customer reviews

• has flawless on-page SEO

• has links to data studies

Despite following every best practice, those pages are tanking massively

learn.g2 pages are getting killed, despite following every tactical “best practice” recommended by Google for creating helpful, reliable, people first content.

Look at the pattern below and you’ll easily spot the bloodbath 🩸

So why is this happening?

I think people know this is not real authenticity

Sure, it’s written in first-person language, but I don’t think G2 authors are actually testing and reviewing the tools 👇 (to be fair, no one really is).

There are very few people producing original, differentiated, first-hand experience based content in B2B marketing.

It’s almost all ghostwritten. It's just being done for SEO/GEO.

It’s not totally AI slop — but it’s generic, uninteresting and not very believable.

In this example below, the author claims she tested the 8 best review management software, meanwhile her bio says she’s a content marketer at G2 with a specialty in writing content for ERP.

Google has dramatically shifted the types of websites it rewards

I don’t think G2 is “bad” at SEO. In fact, I think they are proficient from a tactical standpoint — and if this were 2016 they’d be killing the game.

But Cyrus Shepard nails it here:

The mechanisms that allowed certain sites to accumulate so much traffic for a broad set of queries *simply don't exist* any longer.

Google simply moved that traffic to different types of publishers: Reddit, YouTube, forums, and first-party sources of information.

G2 no longer fits what Google is prioritizing

Cyrus Shepard recently identified 5 features that are very strongly correlated with whether a website was winning or losing Google over the past 12 months.

1. Offers a Product or Service - 0.391

2. Allows Task Completion - 0.381

3. Proprietary Assets - 0.357

4. Tight Topical Focus - 0.250

5. Strong Brand - 0.206

G2 fits none of these criteria, with the exception of “strong brand” but even that’s debatable. Anyway, I’d recommend you give this study a read 👇

5 Data-Backed Features of Websites Winning Google in 2026

Despite their SEO problems, G2 will be fine

But here’s the thing. G2 is not throwing in the towel. They are expanding their moat by increasing coverage with other domains.

They recently acquired Capterra, Software Advice, and GetApp from Gartner in a blockbuster deal.

My friends at Omniscient Digital published a great write up on this, where I shared my input:

If G2 now owns four high-authority review domains, they just elevated their position to ‘we own the narrative, so brands better work with us’. They are clearly going to influence which vendors get framed as ‘best overall’ or ‘best for enterprise’ etc.”

Kevin Indig says paid G2 profiles get cited by LLMs 94% more than free profiles

FOMO is one of G2’s biggest marketing tactics. I don’t love it, but they are going to use this data as a means of forcing brands to play their game.

Driving positive customer reviews and having strong profile completeness is a legitimate and important part of GEO, whether we like it or not.

It’s why GEO is largely a reputation problem rather than a tactical problem.

The SEO cat and mouse game will never end

The SEO golden era is over. You can follow every “best practice” to the tee and still fail because of environmental changes.

Despite the algorithm shifting in a new direction, brands will ultimately continue chasing traffic and GEO visibility by testing new ways to beat the system.

Brands aren’t giving up on SEO/GEO. The cat and mouse game is just evolving.

And as the saying goes… it works until it doesn’t.