Your experience doesn’t jibe with market realities. Merchants play all sort of games to be the number one listed search result when you are searching for something generic like “headphones”.

Who actually searches for such a short tail term and expects good results? Does anyone ever google the term “cars” when they want to buy a car? More likely it’s a term like “8 seat SUV” or something more focused. Maybe headphones are different though..

And the first non advertising link is car.com where I can search for specific cars. Now Google has lost a customer and car.com has gained one. Now I can advertise on car.com and get a much better targeted advertising.