This post has been a long time coming.
I started Smart Home Reviewer in early 2015 after purchasing a Honeywell wifi thermostat (it was a pre-Nest world), running into an issue, and discovering there was nothing out there to help people beyond a couple of ugly message boards. I did find my answer (you can power them with a 12v AC adapter from Amazon if you cut the tip off the cord), but I felt there should be a site dedicated to sharing smart home information in what was then a very niche industry.
Over the last 10 years I’ve had a lot of fun with it. I’ve gotten a handful of free products to review, I’ve made enough money to pay for this site and my smart home hobby, and I’ve hopefully shared useful information with you all. You all…there’s the problem isn’t it. I’m not sure there’s a “you all” left to see this.
You see, this site was largely driven by search traffic. While I’m sure out of the roughly 30,000 monthly readers I used to have there were a handful who came here regularly, the majority of the traffic was driven by people searching for reviews or how to guides on Google.
About 18 months ago Google tweaked their algorithm, as they do regularly, and that tweak really hit this site hard. Most of the ranked pages lost their rankings, and it was no longer coming up in searches where it used to perform well. Overwhelmed with my primary job and family life, I just never got around to fixing anything. Although I have dozens of drafts written, I lost the drive to polish and publish them, so the site went stale.
Last year Google rolled out AI summary in search, and as you’ll soon see across the web, it’s been devastating to content creators. What traffic we had left has been all but consumed by AI summaries in search that don’t even cite their sources. The final nail in the coffin for me was when I searched for a smart plug with an outlet on the side (it’s still the most logical place for the outlet! Why do we have to suffer smart plugs sticking 4″ out from the wall when a lamp is plugged in?!), and Google’s AI summary included what appeared to be my own words, or a summary of my own words, mashed up in their “content.”
This site has been a labor of love for me. I never made much money from it and never really cared to. I just wanted to share tips, call out bullshit products when I saw them, and interact with like minded people. I have no interest in providing free content to LLM companies who pirate my thoughts for their own profit. While I have enjoyed having a platform and a small voice in the smart home community, I have just lost the energy to fight against the tide that is Google and other LLM companies.
All that said, to anyone who is still around to read this, I appreciate you and I thank you for coming here. I hope you enjoy automating your homes as much as I have this last decade or so. I truly hope that other content creators fare better than I have in the AI world, but right now I don’t see a bright future unless something changes.
Thank you for a great run! SmartHomeReviewer will stay live until March 2026 when our hosting runs out.