Comment by Scoundreller

It was always hard to compete for generic keywords like "air purifiers". Wirecutter or whatever with its ton of backlinks would win unless you're doing really shady SEO.

What's been lost is the niche side of independent sites. You used to be able to write a review about Air Purifier Model 5643563453 and you would rank on the first page for any searches for it if nobody else wrote a review about it.

Now you just won't get that traction and will get generic corp results or at best, independent reviews on social media platforms.

Google at least used to include a sprinkling of different types of results, a store, a wiki, a forum, a review site, a blog... Now you can do a search and get 10 results from the same .com for the brand name.