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I’ve long thought something along similar lines: in a world with instant search, advertising becomes irrelevant if the search actually helps you to find product

I’ve long thought something along similar lines: in a world with instant search, advertising becomes irrelevant if the search actually helps you to find products. It is in this way that google has actually failed. If you look for a product you get a whole load of dross back. It’s impossible to filter by spec, you can add keywords but this rarely gives you more sensible results these days. The products get lost in the noise. Most of the time what would be better would be a structured directory of product information enabling you to zero in on the product you want without the crap. This directory would be independent of any specific vendor. All new products would be released into the directory so you can track all new products in certain categories to stay informed. Gaming of the directory would be policed ensuring equal standing of all products. The only thing this doesn’t handle well is new product categories. But sure there’s ways to handle it.

throwaway13337 6y ago
So what's the business model? These sorts of listing aggregators (like pc parts sites) have a perverse incentive to always allow those that pay to get top placement. I'm genuinely interested in a business model for this stuff that can support fair placement. Flat subscription fees on the vendor side needs to first solve the chicken and egg problem. Flat subscription fees on the customer side doesn't seem likely to work. Communicating that your service is really really different because it does not have shady business practices is a hard sale at best. Look at how free to play games thrive versus more ethical business models. I want to work on solutions to these insidious businesses that seem so commonplace today but I don't know a model that could work.
- zentiggr 6y ago
  Typical aggregator sites so far, don't have customer-side "flag this product" or "flag this tag/category as incorrect" feedback. Allow buyers to push back against bogus, overtagged, or miscategorized items and that aggregator will gain some serious reputation over Amazon and any other venues in the same niche. And I mean meaningful pushback - not "it's flagged and will be online still until reviewed by the scarce human team gets to it" but "it's flagged and offline until humans review it and reapprove or flush it". Sure there will always be trolls who flag anything and everything but they can get banned as users under existing abuse terms. Imagine how quickly Amazon would get flushed clean of bogus listings if user flags pushed them offline until Amazon staff could verify and relist them... they'd have to prioritize restoring actual useful items, or at least start seriously policing the worst actors on the supplier side to stem the tide. Losing "good" items in a sea of flagged bad ones would also be a secondary incentive to clean house and keep it that way.
samoa42 6y ago
one site i frequently consult for electronics is https://geizhals.at https://geizhals.at because it lets one filter by various product characteristics. it is mainly for DACH region. i guess their business model is whitelabeling for other sites which want to include the functionality, never noticed any bias.
- Tarsul 6y ago
  it's a great site. They also advertise on certain category pages (e.g. on the page for all TVs: https://geizhals.de/?o=36 https://geizhals.de/?o=36 "featured brand" or "featured merchant"), e.g. with amazon links but only for products where amazon has the lowest prices. Additionally, they probably get some money from their regular ref links (there are even webpages that only have good prices when going directly through the geizhals link; but that's no secret since it says so on the product listing on geizhals, so that's fair by me also).
colechristensen 6y ago
Then your ad spend becomes your search engine optimization spend and you get even worse results. It is quite hard for a search engine to fairly treat results which are trying everything to manipulate the system and results that aren’t trying at all.

throwaway13337 6y ago

So what's the business model? These sorts of listing aggregators (like pc parts sites) have a perverse incentive to always allow those that pay to get top placement. I'm genuinely interested in a business model for this stuff that can support fair placement. Flat subscription fees on the vendor side needs to first solve the chicken and egg problem. Flat subscription fees on the customer side doesn't seem likely to work. Communicating that your service is really really different because it does not have shady business practices is a hard sale at best. Look at how free to play games thrive versus more ethical business models. I want to work on solutions to these insidious businesses that seem so commonplace today but I don't know a model that could work.

zentiggr 6y ago
Typical aggregator sites so far, don't have customer-side "flag this product" or "flag this tag/category as incorrect" feedback. Allow buyers to push back against bogus, overtagged, or miscategorized items and that aggregator will gain some serious reputation over Amazon and any other venues in the same niche. And I mean meaningful pushback - not "it's flagged and will be online still until reviewed by the scarce human team gets to it" but "it's flagged and offline until humans review it and reapprove or flush it". Sure there will always be trolls who flag anything and everything but they can get banned as users under existing abuse terms. Imagine how quickly Amazon would get flushed clean of bogus listings if user flags pushed them offline until Amazon staff could verify and relist them... they'd have to prioritize restoring actual useful items, or at least start seriously policing the worst actors on the supplier side to stem the tide. Losing "good" items in a sea of flagged bad ones would also be a secondary incentive to clean house and keep it that way.

samoa42 6y ago

one site i frequently consult for electronics is https://geizhals.at https://geizhals.at because it lets one filter by various product characteristics. it is mainly for DACH region. i guess their business model is whitelabeling for other sites which want to include the functionality, never noticed any bias.

Tarsul 6y ago
it's a great site. They also advertise on certain category pages (e.g. on the page for all TVs: https://geizhals.de/?o=36 https://geizhals.de/?o=36 "featured brand" or "featured merchant"), e.g. with amazon links but only for products where amazon has the lowest prices. Additionally, they probably get some money from their regular ref links (there are even webpages that only have good prices when going directly through the geizhals link; but that's no secret since it says so on the product listing on geizhals, so that's fair by me also).

colechristensen 6y ago

Then your ad spend becomes your search engine optimization spend and you get even worse results. It is quite hard for a search engine to fairly treat results which are trying everything to manipulate the system and results that aren’t trying at all.