How Google is killing independent sites like ours
And why you shouldn’t trust product reviews from big media publishers ranking at the top of Google.
Wow the SEO world is really sick
In a just world, the idea of SEO shouldn't even exist. You shouldn't be able to game an algorithm to rise to the top. But that's what literally our entire world has become now. Social media influencers, scammy and spammy websites and services, AI art thieves, content farm sewage. None of it would exist if the algorithms didn't let you game them or promote certain behaviors.
The problem is that "don't let people game you" is extremely difficult.
It's many, many orders of magnitude easier to provide a useful search of sites that tell you the truth about what they are than it is when 99% of sites lie to you.
I'm a web developer and used to work for companies focused on SEO over quality. It's a pain in the ass and takes all the fun out of the job.
I've definitely noticed the results suck ass, but this is a nice breakdown.
Kind of related question - any suggestions what to use if I want to skip this problem? I was looking for some headphones earlier and as explained in the article, most sites point to the same brands. I finally got to see some different brands/models and users reviews from forum group. The problem is I found those forums from Google... so any suggestions what I can try without being stuck in this google SEO vortex?
Wirecutter and RTINGS both do a lot of testing and reviews, including for headphones.
Awesome. I ran into RTINGS a few times. But not wirecutter. Gonna give those a read.
Thanks
Consumer Reports is still around and still excellent. I paid for a membership to them for quite some time and it was worth it.
I think it's an instance of the fundamental problem that if people generally want something (good reviews) for free, but it costs money to make, eventually it'll get hollowed out and replaced with something empty and worthless, because there wasn't money in continuing to provide it for free.
Australia has Choice. It is funded and independent by being a paid/subscriber service, though being a member is not expensive. Choice is pretty well-known, as when a product wins a recommendation it is prestigious. Therefore, the manufacturers will proudly put a Choice logo on their ads to assure consumers that their product is good.
I can't see Choice going away, as it's a very good service and by far the most trusted source for unbiased reviews in Australia.
Nice, this is very similar to the Consumer report. Its good to read reviews from different countries. I think its more likely they would focus on companies in their region. I used to read UK T3, they show more european brands.
A lot of people just add "reddit" to their search query. It does work pretty well, but I realise not every Lemmy user will be willing to do that.
You can sign up to kagi.com for non ad based rankings results like we had in 2010 era google searches. 100 free searches then a paid model.
Or use this open source engine a guy built and maintains in his basement https://stract.com/
I actually never heard of them. Gonna give them a try thanks!
Goshdarnit, I've seen these weirdo webpages before, which would talk at length about how they've conducted tests, but then not show any data. I was seriously wondering, why they were bothering, but of course, it's some shitty metric they have to fulfill.
I think this is part of the reason that Google sucks nowadays. I genuinely don't feel like I can trust it for finding products.
I just use it for opening the door to learn about features (not brands/models) that I didn't know about previously. Then I do searches for those features and try to find forum results (usually Reddit unfortunately). It seems to work decently well
I feel like Google results these days value the domain rather than the individual webpages instead. Always the same websites..
Fantastic article highlighting the issue. Thanks!
I remember there was a time Google tried to be the best search engine out there, by ranking first what has most value for the user. Now it is ranking first what brings them more money, hence undermining Google's credibility, and making itself less ueful for the user. The enshittification of Google for everyone to see.
Somehow the user has been banned from Reddit, but their comment is still at the top of the thread — we wonder how many other comments this user has published across different subreddits.
...and that's the kind of content Reddit wants to sell to train AIs 🤣
That's cool and all and important for exposure, but what can I really do about it? It's the ethereal algorithm and shitty companies gaming it for profit, with everyone else suffering because of it
You can sign up to kagi.com for non ad based rankings results like we had in 2010 era google searches. 100 free searches then a paid model.
Or use this open source engine a guy built and maintains in his basement https://stract.com/
I wanted to support this site by trying to add it as an rss but they didn't have one :(
