Are Comparison Articles Good for SEO? 25 Pages, 15 Clicks

By Ugur Saritepe · September 12, 2026

Are comparison articles good for SEO? Ours were not: 25 "X vs Y" game pages earned 4,732 impressions and 15 clicks in 90 days. On every comparison query we checked, forums own the results page. Here is the data, and the two minute check I now run before writing any versus page.

What 25 comparison pages earned in 90 days

game-scout.app, the games directory I run and write about openly, published 25 comparison articles: Elden Ring vs Dark Souls 3, GTA 5 vs Red Dead Redemption 2, Starfield vs No Man's Sky, and so on. They were cheap to produce, which was the point. Rankings on the site's list pages already held the facts, so a comparison looked like free coverage of a query family people really type. This is what I typed when I went to check on them:

all 18 live vs pages, one filtered pull, last 7 days

7 days:  879 impressions   3 clicks   0.3% CTR

The next day we pulled the full 90 day window for all 25 pages: 4,732 impressions, 15 clicks, average position 11.5, and only 3 pages that ever reached the top 10. That is a 0.3% click rate for the whole class. For scale, the same site's ranked list pages convert at 2.10% and its best hand-written article at 4.47% in the same period. The comparisons were not slightly behind the rest of the site; they were an order of magnitude behind it.

The result page said no before we started

The 90 day numbers only confirmed what the SERP, the page of results Google shows for one query, would have said up front. On 11 September 2026 we ran a search check on each comparison's head query, the same read the check_serp tool returns: who holds the top 10, and which result features are present.

one call per comparison query ("elden ring vs dark souls 3", "gta 5 vs rdr2", ...)

every SERP checked: Reddit, Steam forums, GameFAQs, Quora or YouTube on top
featured snippet: none
People Also Ask: present on every one
editorial sites (TheGamer, GameRant, Screen Rant): once or twice per SERP

A "which is better" query is an experience question, and Google answers experience questions with discussions. A searcher deciding between two games wants fifty players arguing, not one site's table. This is not specific to games: I checked "why does reddit outrank my website" on 12 September 2026, and five of the nine organic results were Reddit threads. The complaint about forums winning is itself won by forums.

The intent runs deeper than the word "vs". Our Final Fantasy 7 comparison earns most of its impressions on "difference between remake and rebirth", which is a what-changed question, not a which-wins question. The page answered the wrong one. On the same site we had already classed 2,000 queries by what the answer demands: at the same rank band, list-shaped queries clicked at 3.41% and two-option comparison queries at 1.48%. The class was measurably weaker before we wrote a single extra page for it.

What we did about it, dated

On 10 September 2026 we pulled autonomous comparisons from the site's daily content plan, on this evidence. The production line, not the pages, was the problem: thin auto-generated comparisons are exactly what Google's people-first content guidance warns about when it lists "content made mainly to attract search visits" and extensive automation as the signs of search-engine-first work. We had matched both signs and paid the expected price. This was the owner decision, as typed:

On 11 September 2026 comparisons returned in a rebuilt format: a verdict up front, category winners (story, combat, value), and community sentiment summarized with sources, the things a scattered forum thread cannot hand a reader in one place. Three new comparisons shipped in that format the same day, each grounded in rankings the site already publishes. We have not converted the other old comparison pages to the new format as I write this; only the Final Fantasy page was rebuilt, and the three new comparisons were written into the new format directly. The rebuilt format is one day old, so I have no result to report for it yet, and I will report it either way, the same as the last time we measured a content class and demoted it.

Check who owns your result page in two minutes

The check that would have saved us 25 pages is one search per target query, read with three questions:

• Count forums in the top 10. Reddit, Quora, Stack Exchange, niche forums, YouTube. Five or more and the query is discussion-shaped; a lone article rarely displaces them. Zero to two, with editorial sites ranking, means an article can compete.
• Look for a featured snippet. None of our comparison queries had one. No snippet on a question query is one more sign Google is not looking for a single definitive answer there.
• Read the People Also Ask questions. They name the intent Google believes in. Ours asked what changed between the two games, which is the page we should have written.

The bad output looks like our SERPs above: forums stacked to the top, no snippet. The good output is an editorial page ranking with a weak answer, which is a gap you can take. If the read says forums own it, write the page only if you can do what the thread cannot: state a verdict, show measured data, or cover the what-changed intent the thread buries.

This post is part of our AI-assistant SEO series, written from the SEO work we do on our own sites. For a five-minute check of the basics on any site, the free triage report runs eight checks from a URL alone, no account needed.

FAQ

Are comparison articles good for SEO?

Check who already owns the result page before you write one. Our 25 X vs Y game comparisons earned 4,732 impressions and 15 clicks in 90 days, measured 11 September 2026, because every comparison result page we checked was dominated by Reddit, Steam forums, GameFAQs, Quora and YouTube. Comparison pages can work, but the incumbents on your exact query decide that, not the format.

Why do Reddit and forums outrank comparison articles?

Which is better questions are experience questions, and Google surfaces discussions for them. People asking X vs Y want many opinions from players or users, not one editor's table. In our checks, forum threads held the top positions on every game comparison query, editorial sites appeared once or twice per page, and even the search for why Reddit outranks websites returns mostly Reddit threads.

Should I delete comparison pages that get no clicks?

We did not delete ours. We stopped producing new ones automatically, rebuilt the format around what a forum thread cannot do (a clear verdict, category winners, community sentiment in one place), and kept the old pages live while they still earn impressions. Deleting pages that cost nothing to keep removes data; stopping the production line is the decision that matters.

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