My free tool out-impressed 29 of my 32 blog posts. Its ranking got five times worse.

This morning, two numbers from the Search Console indicated that the free landing page roast tool had 42 impressions and an average position of 38.0, while the author's blog post had 11 impressions and an average position of 21.1. Six weeks prior, the situation was reversed: the tool had 18 impressions and a position of 7.5, while the blog post had 38 impressions and a position of 17.8.

Since then, the tool's reach has more than doubled, and its average position has worsened by roughly five times. The tool is called favors.dev/roast, and it takes a URL and provides a conversion score out of 100. It analyzes the copy and design of the page across six categories and offers specific issues, fixes, strengths, and a one-line verdict.

The tool's simplicity is a key factor in its success, as it avoids complex features like billing systems, settings, and an admin panel. The author explains that the tool's ranking improvement is due to matching a wider range of queries, but its average position has worsened due to ranking on more loose queries. Despite the small numbers, the tool has outperformed 29 out of 32 blog posts, highlighting the importance of intent matching over gatekeeping the result behind an email field.

The tool's success is rooted in providing instant, free critiques of landing pages, encouraging users to share and engage with the content. Favors.dev is a marketing co-op for founders, where members earn points by completing verified tasks and using them to launch their own projects. The roast tool is a natural fit for this ecosystem, as it helps founders get honest feedback on their landing pages before launching.