[nsmog767]

SEO person here. If you look at any topic or vertical with a lot of competition, there is bound to be monotony. That's because SEO people are trained to study "search intent", meaning, what do people think about when they search? What questions/desires can we, as publishers, help them fulfill?

It's a good theory, but becomes circular when you consider that one of the primary ways to determine search intent is . . . seeing what does well on Google.

So if you search for, say, "customer feedback", you see a lot of general guides about strategy, offering general definitions. That's likely because the first couple pages that ranked did it, and then more players saw that and said "oh, search intent for 'customer feedback' is [whatever they are doing]."

When you see all the listicles for certain queries, that's what you're seeing. Yes, it probably reflects some desire from people to see a list of options. But it's also just SEO people saying "look, the search intent is X." It leads to everyone copying each other and reduces the incentive to try and be innovative/think outside the box with content.