My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

"according to several online customers" - This phrase or a close variant is used in almost every review and it's really distracting. It feels too robotic and repetitive.

In general, it seems like "build quality" is a common complaint, which at these price points is likely always going to be an issue. I guess what I mean is with cheap prices I'm not expecting build quality to be great so repeatedly calling it out in a general sense isn't all that useful. Far more useful is when a specific part is called out, which in one case it is, the wire being flimsy. More of that!

In general, it would be nice to have more specifics instead of the constant generalities one associates with low/er-cost goods.

The phrase "noise cancelling" is used about 44 times in the article. From what I recall this may be considered "keyword stuffing", which is used to be (and almost certainly still is, a big old no-no). Of course how do you create an aggregate content page without mentioning the topic repeatedly? Well my friend that's the Google content paradox! - talk about something without actually mentioning it by name.

On general mission: it would be really nice to have the top "pick" better called out.

I read the first review and was ok, that sounds like an option I wouldn't have considered, good job site! But then said "Mpow hmmm... not a brand I've heard of", so I scanned down and came to the JLab's. I said "I've heard of them!" and read the blurb.

That's where the problem starts: For almost the same price the blurb makes the Jlabs sound "better" or at least more attractive than what I thought was the "top pick / best value".

I think some of this may have to do with the fact that in the Mpow's have two negative aspects pointed out "Others say that the battery life and microphone are disappointing", whereas the Jlabs only one: "pinch their ears". Mind this isn't about count so much as what's being called out: one may have bad battery life and the other may actually hurt my head lol.

The reason I say "problem" is sites like Wire cutter take a stand and proclaim "this is the best", even though in most cases the top 3 or more would all be just fine. As it stands, we have many low cost options presented and all with what appears to be potentially deal-breaking flaws; the end result is I don't really feel any better prepared that if I had just gone to Amazon and scanned reviews myself.

What's more, if I see something with 20 total reviews at 5 stars and a similar product with 40k 4 stars, I'll usually just go for the one with more reviews. In short, number of reviews is a strong signal for me, and I think / hope it would be trivial to add that as a metric to your site.

On Google: So in closing hopefully some of those thoughts are useful in some way, but I did want to close by saying I absolutely feel your pain.

Someone like you posts a traffic drop off story and we all rush in to say this is why, but what we forget is Rome wasn't built in a damned day. If this traffic penalty sticks it's pretty safe to say you're business and dream is dead. No google means no traffic means no site. Business is hard but what we need to agree upon is the promise of the internet was to democratize and incubate. The early internet certainly did, the modern, not so much.

I think we can all agree that the best ideas should rise to the top and be rewarded. We should also agree that a single company shouldn't have that power, but the Internet's users. Legislation is the only cure here, so far as I can see, as this exact scenario plays out time and again and it's always at our expense, both business owners and internet users.

Good luck, and keep at it!

Incidentally, in my country, there is a government-mandated (everyone has it) single sign-on solution that companies can use if they want to really know who someone is. The implementation isn't perfect and unfortunately they're starting to nudge people into using an app (that can only come from an app store, creating a sort of catch-22) instead of one-time pads, and there's a lot to complain about there. But I think the principle is completely reasonable, that just like we have passports, birth certificates etc., governments absolutely need to enter the digital era and provide modern forms of identity services. This is yet another area where everything moving to the internet has led to privatization through the back door, and I fear the world where some American company can turn me into a digital unperson much more than one in which my government can.