I've had that feeling too, but I wonder if it's because the good old Internet of enthusiasts enthusiastically posting about the things that enthuse them has given way to the faceless content farms to such an extent that even Google isn't able to filter the signal out from the noise. I.e., I wonder if it is not so much their fault for being less good than they used to be as it is their fault for not being so much better than they used to be.

(Apologies for offtopicness: could you please email us at hn@ycombinator.com? I want to send you some repost invites but don't have an address to do that.)

Depends what you mean any rando cant just rock up and get position 1 for "car insurance" probably true.

But improve the performance for a site absolutely or get the right traffic to the right geo version of your page yep (bloody hard work I might add)

Ikea is having a bit of a problem in this area at the moment for example.

Things like load speed, security and mobile responsiveness can make or break a site's Google performance. So yes, some stuff works but chasing trophy keywords and such is a fools errand.