18 ms·

Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

293 points by vincent_s 5y ago

dazc 5y ago
There is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of 'best bikes under $500' for any reason other than this though? However. the fact that you found so many amazon affiliates says more about the integrity of other bike retailers. Why would there not be an even spread of affiliate links to merchants other than amazon do you wonder? Certainty of payment, that's why.
- Traster 5y ago
  I don't think there is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of best bikes for under $500. There are plenty of incentives for journalism publications like MCN (motorcycle news) to do reviews of the products in the sectors they cover. There are plenty of publications about Cycling, it's a very popular sport. The problem is that the monetization of the affiliate system creates a massive incentive for people to crowd out the real people who do this. Instead of googling which bike to buy and being met with a number of fairly reputable publications which specialize in this stuff, you're met with Business Insider and other trash which are all just following the incentive of trying to get their affiliate link clicked between the time you start researching and the time you innevitably buy something off Amazon. I think the MCN example above is actually really good - since no one expects to get an affiliate payment from Amazon from someone buying a motorcycle, the quality of the reviews for "Best motorbike under $5000" are about a million times better than "Best bike for under $500". The good reviews do exist, you just can't find them, because Amazon has completely screwed the click through path from "Google X product -> Purchase on Amazon"
  - jpalomaki 5y ago
    If people are not willing to pay for content and block ads, affiliate and content marketing schemes might be the future of these sites as well.
    - zo1 5y ago
      I think we may have stumbled upon an unfortunate circumstance of how our brains work, and it's being actively exploited (like say how we agree that marketing cigarettes to kids is bad kind of thing?). We could reasonably say that we are willing to pay for content, we're just not attuned to seeing how "free" content is actually detrimental to us and is being monetized behind the scenes. At the same time, Google/Amazon latched on to it and are taking advantage of it for their own gains. Either way, we're stuck in a downward feedback loop that's only going to make this worse until one of the big players falls over.
  - dazc 5y ago
    The likes of motorcycle and car magazines/review sites are also incentivised by money, it may not be quite so obvious how though? Let's say I want to do an honest review of bikes under $500, where am I going to get the bikes from in order to do this? Shall I go out and buy them?
    - Traster 5y ago
      This is covered by standard journalists all the time - Linus (from LTT) talks about this all the time. Of course manufacturers give samples to test, but that's table stakes, there is absolutely not an expectation of specific positive coverage.
- prepend 5y ago
  > There is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of 'best bikes under $500' for any reason other than this though? “Back in the olden days” people would write pages because they loved the subject area and wanted to share knowledge/show off/start conversations. So it was very common for people who were just really into bikes to spend some time sharing their thoughts on what the top 10 bikes under $500 were because they wanted to help people buy good bikes. There was no monetization, or at least direct monetization. Those sites may still be around, but monetization has driven low-quality content higher up in SEO so the bike lover (who probably doesn’t care about SEO) doesn’t get content seen.
  - ackbar03 5y ago
    >There was no monetization, or at least direct monetization Maybe they can try affiliate links! I think that was how the "crappy" sites used to do it in the old days. I never really understood the whole seo game and if anyone actually made money or just pretended to make money so they can sell courses
    - prepend 5y ago
      I think some people like sharing knowledge. I keep a blog where I just write things that are interesting to me and maybe to others. I used to have affiliate links because I was playing around with stuff, but don’t think any have worked in 10+ years. I have no monetization plan or ever figure I’ll make money off the site. But it costs me nothing to run, so that’s ok. There are many sites like this, but they are much harder to find because Google isn’t able to differentiate meaningful content from the facade of meaningful content (ie, SEO). It’s like the degradation in academic papers where groups will reference each other like crazy to game rankings.
avipars 5y ago
I could say that affiliate marketing in general... wirecutter - NYT has a whole site and twitter feed for their "deals" with affiliate links
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
  They are pretty open about the business model, and to put a lot more work into the reviews than just generating a list of affiliate links 3ith the data available from Amazon‘s API: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/about/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/about/
- oftenwrong 5y ago
  The Wirecutter has been accused of changing their recommendations based on their ability to monetise product links as an affiliate: https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to-play-model https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to...
  - ramphastidae 5y ago
    Wirecutter doesn’t do reviews of “the best x,” they do reviews of “the best x that can be purchased via an online store that offers adequate referral revenue to Wirecutter”
scwoodal 5y ago
I add “site:reddit.com” to consumer/product related Google searches. This usually gets me the quality information I’m looking for.
- whatch 5y ago
  Or simply add "Reddit" to your search query. The first result will be from Reddit. And there will be a URL to other results from there.
  - r1ch 5y ago
    I see more and more queries suggesting autocompletion of "reddit" and similar sites these days. Google's default results are extremely poor quality for many queries.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  I guess many people do that, but it shows the review system failed miserably when you look for quality information on reddit. I mean, in theory, reddit would have all kinds of noise and fake opinions, whereas Amazon etc. should have only verified and curated reviews, including methodologies for spotting abuse and procedures for manual verification. Well, the economics of scale that drives them insane profits is also the cause they lost this battle.
  - dageshi 5y ago
    Reddit is always going to be better. Niche subs are where actual experts who've tried entire ranges of products hang out, amazon is where one random guy bought their first crappy product and left a 5 star review because they don't actually know whether what they bought is good or not.
    - noneeeed 5y ago
      Or even worse, leaving a 5 star review because it is what they ordered but they haven't actually used it because it's a present for their nephew...
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
I think search is broken full stop for any search in the form "Best X in/for/under Y" - there are too many low quality sites publishing 'list' articles, which just link to items for sale that offer them affiliate commission. For the example of "bikes under $500" it's often better to do a google news search to get magazine/newspaper articles where they are more likely to have done actual reviews.
- addingnumbers 5y ago
  Totally agree, I've been impressed with how effective adding "-intitle:best" to a Google search is at filtering out SEO-gaming fluff
codingdave 5y ago
I believe both search and affiliate programs have flaws... but I didn't see anything that convinced me this is some conspiracy between the companies. I also don't have a problem with affiliate programs. If someone posts links that are relevant to the topic at hand, there is little harm in them getting a few cents from a purchase I would have made anyway. If anything, it is funding content creation in a way that works. That being said, the point of the article is 100% correct that low-effort, low-value review sites just to get affiliate links ranked in search results are problematic and annoying. I make a judgement call when I run into them - if they really did put in some effort and have decent reviews contrasting different items, I'll go ahead and click the link. They wrote content, the content was helpful, no problem. On the other hand, if it was just a list of links with no added value, I don't click the links. It is just as a easy to do my own search on a product name, or even copy the link and remove the affiliate tag. Like everything else in the world, nothing is black and white. The presence of some problematic sites doesn't invalidate an entire mechanism for funding content creation.
- nuker 5y ago
  > If anything, it is funding content creation in a way that works. Affiliate programs distort content, to the point of being useless, or justify making of outright fake content.
richardpetersen 5y ago
The reason affiliates always tend to use amazon's program is not because it has the highest pay outs. Instead its because Amazon converts really well.
SilkRoadie 5y ago
I would argue that google is being used incorrectly here. Google is specially being asked for a product list which meets a certain criteria. The user is asking Google to recommend the best bikes.. The user is actually looking for authoritative bicycle reviews to make a purchasing decision. Searching for “bicycle reviews” would give a far higher chance of finding what the user is after. They can then use the criteria on the review site to narrow down what they are after. There is also a limit to what searching will get you. Going to a bike shop will allow an expert in this subject matter to assess your personal requirements and advise accordingly. For a lot of things, going out and talking to someone will yield far better results than Google ever will.
- whydid 5y ago
  While I agree with you about the incorrect search being used, I disagree that bike review results will give anything more useful. Many "reviews" are also collections of affiliate links, disguised as a review.
- nuker 5y ago
  > Searching for “bicycle reviews” would give a far higher chance of finding what the user is after. Nope. Google will still give you dumb reviews pages full of “Check price on Amazon” affiliate links. What works for me is adding “site:reddit.com” or “forum” to search.
  - _rs 5y ago
    Some communities have their own forums they use too, and I’ve only stumbled upon these by accident. It would be nice if there were an index somewhere that kept track of them.
  - bagacrap 5y ago
    did you actually try that query? I just got lots of relatively high quality review sites/periodicals. I say "relatively" because even industry stalwarts like Bicycling Magazine, which has been around in print and/or online form for decades, are ad-driven and far from unbiased. But if you trust Consumer Reports or NY Times more, they're on the first page too.
wr3ck_face 5y ago
Does anyone know why this website is being blocked by the Indian government? "Your requested URL has been blocked as per the directions received from Department of Telecommunications, Government of India. Please contact administrator for more information."
pcdoodle 5y ago
Remember taking pride in being able to find anything with google? Now it feels like "as seen on TV" in the search results.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
killjoywashere 5y ago
It's also a rough time to be buying a bicycle. I bought 3 bikes (1 new, 2 used) this year and each one was a minor miracle.
- mdolon 5y ago
  I wrote this pre-pandemic, back in January of 2020. I was able to snag a bike at a used bike sale a few weeks after writing it. Congrats on your new bikes!
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
As for the search in question: instead of "best commuter bikes for under $500", do yourself a favor and buy a beater bike for $100-200. The comfort is the same if not higher, but you stop thinking about your bike at all, and if someone steals it you buy another one next day without shedding a tear. My favorite ones are by fahrradmanufaktur, very solid, a new one will cost you a few thousand bucks, but after 5-7 years it still feels fantastic and you can buy it for a fraction of the price.
- mdolon 5y ago
  I really was clueless at the time and figured it would take at least $400-500 to get a decent starter bike. Thankfully I wound up coming across a used bicycle sale in Brooklyn shortly after and picked up an old Giant for $150. Have probably done a couple of thousand miles on it since!
  - hef19898 5y ago
    We have a small used bike shop nearby, damn great value for money! Bought a used Merida MTB for my so and a Bergamot each for my daughter and myself. Condition is close to new, cost in total 800 bucks, some smaller repairs included.
- matsemann 5y ago
  With the bike shortage the last two seasons, used bikes in OK condition can be almost more expensive than a new bike (since the new, unused bike is sold out everywhere). At least where I live, there is no chance to get what I would call a usable/durable bike for "$100-200" at the moment.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    I bought a couple of them and parked them in different areas of the city to make it easier to reach any location using the subway + bike combination. I choose the ones with flaws that would deter normal buyers but relatively easy to repair, or with a damaged part that I'd replace anyway. I asked a local repair shop if it's fine if I ask the seller to send a bike directly to them and they happily agreed. So I look for an occasion, buy it, they ship it to the repair shop, the shop guy calls me and we talk about what to repair/replace, and in a few days I have a nice bike that will last many years with proper maintenance without spending a fortune.
hesk 5y ago
I think a bike is one of those items that you have to try out before you buy it, so I would not buy it online and I also would not go to Google to research it (at least initially). When I was in the market for a new bike a few years ago, I looked at Yelp to find the 5-6 bicycle shops with the best rating in my city. Then I went to each shop and told them what I wanted from my bike and my budget. This process went very well. Not only am I supremely satisfied with my purchase, even after a couple of years, but I also found a new great bicycle shop that I go to for repairs and upgrades and stuff.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  I agree with try-before-you-buy for bicycles - size, style, etc make a massive difference in utility and comfort. But, how would somebody who only had a bike as a child know this? Google isn't telling them - it sends them to Amazon via listicles. If they happen to search "how to buy a bicycle" there are some potentially useful results. But, even if they do end up a bicycle shop, their likely to run into inventory problems - many bike shops simply don't have any bikes right now. So, it's back to Amazon, or Craigslist/FB Marketplace, or worse.
barrad0s 5y ago
There's also an even worse thing here. If you search for a product under shopping on google, something that is somewhat known like a certain TV model, and you'll see most SHOPPING results are from websites that actually don't sell anything, but rather will have a "product page" where either the buy button is disabled or redirects to amazon. They typically have much lower prices, or just low enough so you'll click.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  I don’t understand why Google doesn’t make Google shopping not terrible. Big potential business value for them if people actually used it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- justaman 5y ago
  From a certain perspective, you can argue Amazon has a monopoly on sales coming from search engines.
bloniac 5y ago
A huge number of developers at Amazon and Google are clapping their hands with glee when the read this…. It’s their jobs to get exactly this outcome. They’ll show your post to the boss to lock in their bonus. This is the prime purpose of these gigantic companies. Of course it works like that. The smartest software developers in the world dedicate their working lives to advertising.
- oblio 5y ago
  I don't get why you're downvoted. That's exactly why these things are failing.
Theodores 5y ago
First world problem really. Also people look for deals hence in this example a second hand bike is purchased. There is no 'title' with bicycles and anything second hand bought off someone you don't know has to be assumed to be stolen. The market for second hand bikes encourages bike theft. There are plenty of very good new bikes at almost all price points and the guy in the local bike shop can show you three bikes suited to your size, your use case and your budget. Docking about online doing your research is all very interesting but the guy in the bike shop will help you just fine without you being an armchair expert. No point ranting on about Amazon you just have to get away from the screen and get to the bike shop.
jsnell 5y ago
> I think the answer is because it’s not in their best interest to do so. They like that most consumers will look at these reviews, click through to Amazon and make their purchase with little hesitation. I don't understand the logic here. Why exactly would Google want people to thoughlessly click on Amazon affiliate links from other sites? There's no short-term beneft, since they don't get a cut. And there's no long-term benefit, since it just risks teaching people to go straight to Amazon for commercial searches.
- mrobins 5y ago
  I think it’s less in Google’s long term best interest and more a marriage of convenience. Hopefully a temporary one. Google increasingly wants users to find what they want on Google itself and not have to click through to the direct search results. Featured snippets are the strategy and these affiliate site listicles are crafted explicitly to be hoovered up as such by the algorithm. One hope is that long term Google improves quality-content detection and deprioritizes the garbage.
- nuker 5y ago
  > There's no short-term beneft, since they don't get a cut. But they do? IMHO some of the SEO techniques use direct payments to Google for keywords, results placement, etc.
  - mminer237 5y ago
    You can buy an ad, but those are shown differently than actual results. You can't pay Google to improve your SEO.
    - nuker 5y ago
      I stand corrected, thanks
    - BrianOnHN 5y ago
      But those ads can increase the number & frequency of pages crawled by Google.
oneepic 5y ago
Slightly off-topic, but I have similar gripes with the Fandom wiki. I am frequently on the Fallout wiki there, but for most of the searches I run (e.g. for in-game characters or items) the first result is a link to a sponsor site. I keep seeing Amazon and Ebay among others. I can't adblock that as far as I know. (EDIT: Switched to uBlock Origin and this method does work on Chrome. Very happy now.)
- blackbear_ 5y ago
  > I can't adblock that as far as I know. Yes you can. uBlock's element picker [1] allows you to hide arbitrary portions of a webpage, and I assume (?) other ad blockers also allow you to insert custom rules. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Element-picker https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Element-picker
benrapscallion 5y ago
Neeva is good for such product searches.
flenserboy 5y ago
Google broke itself over a decade ago when they began giving you results either that their algorithms assumed you wanted or that they wanted you to have, period. Verbatim search hardly produces anything useful anymore, either. Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless.
- danuker 5y ago
  For this reason I started using Yandex. Few advertisers pay for non-Russian ads, and the results are better than DuckDuckGo (in my opinion).
- cainxinth 5y ago
  I take your point, but don’t you think you’re overstating things a bit? The internet is still incredibly useful and so is Google search (granted, it takes more effort and sophistication to avoid the spam).
  - eddieh 5y ago
    I don't think its overstated. The web is broken and search especially so. Now days I look for curated list to find interesting webpages and topics. Google ruined itself years ago, or maybe "we" ruined it.
    - cainxinth 5y ago
      The original commenter said: "Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless." I agree that Google search has been coopted. It now requires a keener awareness of what is and isn't being artificially promoted. Is it annoying? Yes. Is it something that unsophisticated users fall prey to (by design)? Also sadly yes. But 'all but worthless'? That's a huge overstatement.
  - flenserboy 5y ago
    I don't think I'm overstating things. Yes, the internet is useful, but consider how the ability to accurately search is the real key to the whole of it. As the original post points out, this hits us in day-to-day matters just as much as in trying to find/discover useful research on a particular topic. The simple fact is this: not only must nearly every link you click be viewed with suspicion, so must every search result you're given by Google, and pretty much every other engine. What is most useful is a presentation of naked results (with functional boolean operators, exclusions that work, a lack of "suggested" terms, etc.), but that doesn't shape and cause more interactions, direct people to the "proper" sites, or improve the bottom line. I remember the internet when it was usable for much more than consumption; it is only marginally so today.
paulvnickerson 5y ago
Whenever I want to make a purchase online, I search for "best _____" and add reddit as a keyword. Reading through a few threads on reddit will typically give me a pretty good idea of where to start.
- jart 5y ago
  If it weren't for Reddit, Stack Exchange, etc. nothing on the Internet would be organic anymore! Try https://millionshort.com/search?keywords=best%20road%20bikes&shopping=&country=&chat=&remove=0 https://millionshort.com/search?keywords=best%20road%20bikes... If you search Million Short then the top two results are (1) an actual bike store and (2) an actual bicycling magazine that's 100+ years old instead of seo spam. But you raise a much more important point: if you query the web like a stupid person then you'll get stupid results. The OP shouldn't have searched for "under 500" because good bikes under 500 are called used road bikes from a local shop or craigslist owner (as the author revealed and I discovered myself when I was younger c. 2006) so saying "under 500" is sort of like saying, "show me the cheap mass market bicycles please", because the number of people who want good bikes is small, but it's a really devoted group, who are willing to pay what people like us would pay for a good PC or even a car, so if you've already decided you want the chromebook of bikes, then amazon and google aren't doing you that much of a disservice, let's be fair.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
I'd like to note, donning my #2 at amzn hat again, that when the idea for affiliate sales originally came up, we certainly did imagine people creating pages with lists like "best bikes for under $500". However, I feel fairly confident in saying that nobody involved in that in the 95-96 timeframe was imagining that such pages would be created by anyone other than actual enthusiasts (probably a reflection of the state of the internet at the time). In retrospect, this was a profound failure of our imaginations back then. It's also somewhat damning that in the 25+ years since, nothing about the affiliate sales concept has been substantially modified to mitigate the weaponization of this by "best X for 202X" pages.
- GoodJokes 5y ago
  Failure of imagination of the bad things Amazon would go on to do seems like the hallmark of the early days. Great job. Did you also game out the exploitation of warehouse workers?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    I left Amazon after 14 months because, indeed, the exploitation of warehouse workers was obviously a part of the company's future. Didn't want to be a part of that.
- baggy_trough 5y ago
  An actual "best X for 202X" page is extremely useful; the problem is that there are no search signals to distinguish it from a trivially created spam mockery.
  - antihero 5y ago
    There's consumer advocate sites like https://www.which.co.uk/ https://www.which.co.uk/ that are pretty cool. I'd be interesting in knowing other trustable sources, mind.
    - robertlagrant 5y ago
sMarsIntruder 5y ago
That spam level on search engines is increasing year on year, is a fact. It’s also a fact the Google keeps rolling out several updates but the overall quality is getting worse no matter what.
TonyTrapp 5y ago
I ran into a similar thing last year when researching replacement LED spots for my ceiling lights. Most review sites used a similiar headline like "best LED spots in 2020" and they were all comparison tables featuring only products available on Amazon, most of them being manufactured by brands that noone probably ever heard of and that are only available on Amazon, and it was all the same basic crap. Not sure how but eventually I found much a better brand with higher-quality LEDs.
iamben 5y ago
We're going to end up going back to community sites. Reddit is obviously the good example here, but you can guarantee if you find a 'racing bike' forum (or whatever), take the time to join up, search, ask - someone with a passion for it will give you a great, well researched list because they love it and take pride from knowing. Exactly the same as when I ask my friend who's passionate about wine for his recommendation for a £15 bottle of red, and he'll happily waste 20 minutes of his day writing a list and sending me links. I know the pleasure he gets when I message and go "thank you! This is amazing!" Also just to add - this is exactly why those "get paid to recommend things to your friends" startups never work. Because the minute we know that the 'friend' on Facebook who's shouting about the great bottle of wine is getting paid £1 per sale we deliberately don't buy it. (As opposed to the "next time you're in Tesco, pick up a bottle of XYZ, it's great" message - when we probably do.)
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  I want you to be right but the GME and AMC nonsense doesn’t instill a lot of confidence that Reddit isn’t being gamed already by automated accounts. I’ve had my own comment altered a little and regurgitated by a bot before, which was extremely creepy. But you are right that the signal to noise is at least better on Reddit.
  - city41 5y ago
    I do think it is slowly deteriorating though. I've noticed it on indie gaming subreddits. A dev will announce a new game and I suspect a lot of the comments are fake. Maybe not bots just yet, probably more likely the dev gathered a large group of friends to help out. But it wouldn't surprise me if this type of promotion became more and more bot driven as time goes on.
  - hectormalot 5y ago
    I don’t know. It depends on the ‘quality’ of the community. Eg when I’m considering a new IT tool, I tend to search ‘!hn $tool’ just to see what the comments on HN are like, as it’s the most reasonable signal I can find vs google. Similar example, when searching for a good EV charging pass my first go-to were the Tweakers.net forums. It’s a place where the general IT crowd of the Netherlands hangs out and indeed someone already wrote a very extensive topic on the EV charging world, the business models, what to watch out for, etc. I suppose if you have the same for cooking, cycling, cars, etc. It might actually end up going that direction for more people. As a community becomes higher quality though, it also becomes more interesting for scammers to abuse. (The Bitcoin Reddits you mentioned are a great example). Good moderation is key I think.
zwaps 5y ago
Hm, this is not really news, but perhaps it's the first time I consciously think about it. The article is right. I used to search Google for what the best X is. At some point. Indeed, I also used to search amazon and read the reviews. Now, and for what feels like a while, I am not doing that anymore. Like, at all. And this is not a decision I consciously made. If I want to know what the best dishwasher is, I am not going to amazon. I am not putting it into Google, simply because it's all affiliate links all the way down. I either read professional reviews (like non-profit and established test companies, like Warentest here in Germany) or I ask the community somewhere. Google and Amazon have conditioned me to subconsciously not use them anymore for that purpose. Very interesting.
- RandomLensman 5y ago
  Buried in there is also the fact that getting good and reliable information might indeed not be cheap (could be paid for by the public/donors if it is a non-profit, but still costs). In the earlier days of the web and search that was not so much the case, I reckon. For example, a lot more paywalls than 10 years ago.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  I use Reddit a lot for this. But this is an arms race with SEOs and bots. Eventually Reddit will probably be worthless for this.
  - lolsal 5y ago
    What makes you think what you're reading on reddit is not already socially engineered advertisements and bot spam? People have been paying attractive people to "hang out" in bars and pitch gizmos and doo-dads for decades (citation needed); absolutely there are accounts on reddit shilling gizmos across relevant subs.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      Oh sure, but there's still some use in it. Eventually, it'll be all bots and no use.
ds 5y ago
Affiliate links arent the problem per-se. Shitty content is. Google is supposed to penalize sites like this with lousy, thin reviews and promote things like wirecutter and whatnot. I much prefer affiliate links to the alternative: Unblockable ads and paywalls.
okareaman 5y ago
> I wound up buying a used bike from a local shop I think this is a positive outcome. Google and Amazon are driving people to shop locally with their tricks. Same thing happened to me and I couldn't be happier I bought an electric bike from a local shop. I probably paid a little more, but I made a new friend. The local shop owner is a really cool guy who was interested in meeting my needs, not in selling me his most profitable bike.
orangegreen 5y ago
Does anyone know any good alternate search keywords when trying to find "Best x under x?" Content marketers already know that people search "Best x" when doing shopping research, so I wonder if there are alternative keywords that have less spammy results.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
So here's a side-question. The original key idea behind Google's approach to search was page rank : how many, and what kinds, of other sites linked to this one (and potentially, in what context). Does anyone think that this can possibly be at the core of Google's page rank anymore? Most pages don't have any significant number of links any more, and if they do, they are presumably garbage most of the time. Who is out there writing articles called "How to find the best bicycle for under $500" and providing links to excellent, current reviews of bicycles under $500? The answer might not be "nobody", but my instinct is that it's so small that it's effectively the same thing. Consequently, at some point, Google switched from trying to leverage human judgement (i.e. how many other people link to a page), and have been forced (?) to replace that with their own assessment of a page based largely on its own content, metadata and outbound links. Whereas in the 2000's, you could blame people for crappy results from a Google search ("why do people keep linking to that stupid article"), at this point it seems to me that everything, absolutely everything about Google results can be laid at Google's feet.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nwienert 5y ago
  I agree with much of this. I believe the antidote to this is simply acknowledging small communities curate the best content, so essentially marry many small decentralized communities on a searchable platform. Anonymous but karma/identity weighted profiles, curating and debating lists of their favorite things around a single topic. Aggregate them into a single master index with nice UI, then pay out equitably based on performance. There’s a lot of questions on preventing spam and fraud, and I think the further away you get from “high ticket products” the more you avoid that problem, but it can’t be worse than Google: in one you’re relying solely on magical AI and links, the other you can have as much magical AI and links as you want, but you also have user accounts which maybe invited each other and can vouch for each other at a cost, votes that can be weighed by all sorts of factors, and basically a much richer graph of self-moderating people to back the index. Working on something like this at the moment!
  - 5y ago
fidesomnes 5y ago
Do a Google image search on white families and witness how white men, and white families in particular, are memory holed.
JohnBooty 5y ago
I reject the author's conclusion. Either this is a non sequiter, or I'm missing a major piece of the puzzle. How is it that a search giant like Google, with thousands of brilliant minds, can’t help me find good products to buy? I think the answer is because it’s not in their best interest to do so. They like that most consumers will look at these reviews, click through to Amazon and make their purchase with little hesitation. Sorry, but what am I missing here? How does Google benefit from a clueless user thinking this article is reliable, clicking on an affiliate link, and buying a bike at Amazon? As I understand it, Google derives value from their search engine in the following ways: 1. Directly, via paid ads and product placement. 2. Indirectly, by simply being useful, which means people will enjoy using Google search results, which means they will use them again in the future, which is what allows them to sell ads and gather data on users. So as far as I can see it's definitely in Google's interest to provide good and useful search results.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  > So as far as I can see it's definitely in Google's interest to provide good and useful search results. A shame Google didn't get this memo, or buried it somewhere.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    It's so fundamental to their business though, right? They are fundamentally a data mining and advertising operation and that only works if people find them useful and therefore use them so that they can be data-mined and advertised to. I guess maybe Google just feels it's an unsolvable problem, or has a backdoor agreement with Amazon, or feels they are so synonymous with search that only a fraction of users would ever user another search engine even if the quality of their results has become awful
    - WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
      How many hairs do you need to remove from a man's head before you can call him bald? Many chain restaurants follow this scheme: when they appear and need to make a good name for themselves, they are hell bent on the quality of food and the the customer experience. It's important for them to get the word of mouth marketing. But after they establish themselves firmly and start to grow, the bottom line becomes a priority, and they start cutting corners ever so slightly. The portions become smaller but the prices hike up. They start skimping on sauces. One day you discover that the garlic sauce is no longer made in house, but is of the same variety that is purchased in bulk for hot dogs at gas stations. But the momentum is still going. And many other chains in the same price range either don't make the same kind of food, or are worse still. So you have no choice until a new restaurant starts that needs to carve a niche and beat it's competition.
markstos 5y ago
I experience the same. Frequently run into "Top 10 reviews" that appear to be written without the author having having possessed the product and then link off to Amazon. Time wasters.
djoldman 5y ago
Does anyone have any tips/tricks on how to search using google to surface more relevant results besides appending site:reddit.com? I also remember the past magically search days fondly..
- mikevin 5y ago
  I'm starting to avoid Google search alltogether but my best trick is including a really specific term that SEO would avoid because it might not be familiar to the reader. 90% of the time it will ignore the term but somewhere on the page there will be a page where it says it didnt match that term and if i want to search for matches that do include that keyword. That sometimes improves the results. Note: the query will look the same as quoting the term but in my experience doing that initially is simply ignores. All the old dorking/google-fu operators have been ignored by Google for some time now.
rottc0dd 5y ago
I do not know if this is relevant to this discussion, but amazon search results in amazon.com are really bad. And they are just supposed to give me product details from the key words I give. I have to do a google search to get the relevant search result for an amazon product page.
only_as_i_fall 5y ago
I think the fundamental problem is that any sufficiently influential system which provides consumer information on products or services becomes an obvious target for those sellers and service providers to try and game. I think there are basically only 2 ways around this 1) a consumer reports type model were consumers must trust a central authority to be inviolable. 2) legislation that harshly punishes companies who try to influence their own reviews. These would likely be ineffective unless they were incredibly stringent. Is there a more reasonable model that can avoid being gamed though? I feel like more and more I have to rely on word of mouth about products which isn't great for different reasons.
efleurine 5y ago
People need to to become more informed themselves instead of being ready to click through the first line of result. May be we need more informed people and less SMARTphones.
hatsunearu 5y ago
I often search with "reddit" at the end of queries like this to get some good opinions. I'm sure a lot of you know this already though, because "[question] reddit" shows up as recommended search all the time.
elthor89 5y ago
This sounds so familiar. I used to scour the internet for reviews before buying anything. Analysis paralysis is real, and I sometimes just give up buying at all. Over the past years, I found more bad review websites than helpful ones. I doubt there are any real unbiased reviews. Go to google, enter the ad trap Go to your local store, you have to deal with the sales target of the store. Go to Reddit or a forum, and the people there just want to justify their purchase. It is all fine as long as you know it. The authors solution to just go to a local bike shop and buy a bike is in my opinion still a reliable best. I assume he got the opportunity to test ride the bike before purchasing it. My new approach is to write down what I want from the product. This gives me clarity. I still read reviews but take them less serious. I either order online and once I receive my package I sent it back or keep it. Alternatively I just go to a physical store and try it out before buying it.
taeric 5y ago
This feels like a misunderstanding of what it means to have a good bike. If you aren't a regular rider, odds are high that no review will actually be relevant. From how you want to be seated to how hard you can take a climb, bikes are stupid personal. Even tire choice is one that will float above entry level concerns. Ignoring that bikes are heavy in ebike mode right now. And reviews are, by definition, expensive. I can tell you that I like my bike. I can't compare it to more than a couple of others, because I can't afford that many bikes.
bluetwo 5y ago
At some point Google is going to let you simply narrow your search to the dozen or so sites you regularly visit. The rest of the web, outside the top 100, is dying.
evancordell 5y ago
It gets even worse / weirder - I've found if you search for products that might not even exist, you get made up lists of products. A while ago, I wondered if there were such a thing as a microwave + toaster oven combo (there are several convection oven + microwave combos on the market, but none can toast like a toaster oven). Here's the top non-sponsered result: https://www.chefspencil.com/10-best-microwave-toaster-oven-combos-in-2020/ https://www.chefspencil.com/10-best-microwave-toaster-oven-c... And the second result: https://thebrilliantkitchen.com/best-microwave-toaster-oven-combo/ https://thebrilliantkitchen.com/best-microwave-toaster-oven-... Sure sounds like there's at least 10 of these items in existence for me to choose from - but none of the items in these lists are actually both microwaves and toaster ovens.
- valdiorn 5y ago
  I've even had this with mis-spelled words (i.e. "the best Bivycle of 2021" or something like that); I wonder how the f*ck those sites are being generated.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
why would anyone take traffic estimates from a site like SimilarWeb as legit? All those kinds of traffic rankers like Alexa etc have been uncredible for like 20 years. There's too much bot traffic out there now for hits to be filtered reasonably by an external third party
jurassic 5y ago
I would love if sites containing too many affiliate links were de-ranked in google. Google doesn't get a cut of the affiliate revenue, so I don't understand their incentive to let this kind of spam proliferate.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  I would pay to have every page with an affiliate link removed from results.
- rchaud 5y ago
  As long as the carousel of ads and products are shown at the top of the screen, it's all good. Google has monopoly mindshare, it doesn't care if the organic results suck. What are users going to do, go to Bing?
stuaxo 5y ago
Also, ebay.
unnouinceput 5y ago
It's missing a (2020).
gdsdfe 5y ago
I say it time and time again Google is an ad company not a search company they just happen to be doing search
- rchaud 5y ago
  Precisely. I imagine people in this thread have never opened Google Ads in their life. There has been plenty of improvement when it comes to their search ads tools.
rchaud 5y ago
Affiliate links are the reason anybody even makes a website anymore. The era of personal websites made for intellectual curiosity and expression are long gone. It's not just websites though, Youtube and IG are filled with them as well. Basically, if you have any audience at all, it's time to cash in on them by polluting your online presence with these dumb links.
newfonewhodis 5y ago
Step 1: Go to a local store Step 2: ?? Step 3: Throw your computer in the trash I recently did this with some badminton equipment I wanted to buy. Incentives online are terrible. I went to the pro-shop in my club, talked to a coach who's seen me play and he gave me a few options one of which I ended up buying from them.
_greim_ 5y ago
Controversial opinion: this is the system working. These spammy affiliate link sites work well enough that Google lists them, people use them, and bicycles get sold. It isn't globally optimal, but it's locally optimal given a culture where online users refuse to pay for content.
notacoward 5y ago
I've been noticing this too. I don't even remember what I was researching, but I was looking for "best of" lists like OP and I kept finding affiliate-link farms in all sorts of weird places. One was a recipe site, I think, and I definitely wasn't looking for anything even remotely food related at the time. The root of my problem IMO is that Google never came up with a proper way to search by time. Same problem if you want to search for "new video games" or new anything really. You can't specify it as a time constraint. You have to put the year in as a regular search term, which is super easy for the link farmers to game.
cratermoon 5y ago
Oh yeah, search results are now all about selling stuff. I said as much on a similar story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27999002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27999002
6510 5y ago
I use to make and search for pages like: "List of foo with bar" trying to make the list as complete as I could. A bit like a single page web directory. Google would then complain that I had to many links on the pages and de-list them. When seriously researching anything at all you want the full picture of things out there. You cant work with random joe's top 10 affiliate links.
wellthisishn 5y ago
Didn't this concept ruin the internet a long time ago? Like think about the web before AdSense?
MattyRad 5y ago
Listicles have gotten on my nerves, I googled 'how to remove listicles from search results' and got, yes, 2 listicles in the SERP. I tinkered with ddgr[1] and jq for removing listicles with some success, if someone wants to pick up where I left off: `ddgr --expand --noprompt --json 'best bicycles under 500' | jq --raw-output '.[] | select(.title | test("^(?!\\d.$)."))' | jq --raw-output '. | [.title, .url]| @tsv'` [1] https://github.com/jarun/ddgr https://github.com/jarun/ddgr

293 points by vincent_s 5y ago

dazc 5y ago

There is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of 'best bikes under $500' for any reason other than this though? However. the fact that you found so many amazon affiliates says more about the integrity of other bike retailers. Why would there not be an even spread of affiliate links to merchants other than amazon do you wonder? Certainty of payment, that's why.

Traster 5y ago
I don't think there is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of best bikes for under $500. There are plenty of incentives for journalism publications like MCN (motorcycle news) to do reviews of the products in the sectors they cover. There are plenty of publications about Cycling, it's a very popular sport. The problem is that the monetization of the affiliate system creates a massive incentive for people to crowd out the real people who do this. Instead of googling which bike to buy and being met with a number of fairly reputable publications which specialize in this stuff, you're met with Business Insider and other trash which are all just following the incentive of trying to get their affiliate link clicked between the time you start researching and the time you innevitably buy something off Amazon. I think the MCN example above is actually really good - since no one expects to get an affiliate payment from Amazon from someone buying a motorcycle, the quality of the reviews for "Best motorbike under $5000" are about a million times better than "Best bike for under $500". The good reviews do exist, you just can't find them, because Amazon has completely screwed the click through path from "Google X product -> Purchase on Amazon"
- jpalomaki 5y ago
  If people are not willing to pay for content and block ads, affiliate and content marketing schemes might be the future of these sites as well.
  - zo1 5y ago
    I think we may have stumbled upon an unfortunate circumstance of how our brains work, and it's being actively exploited (like say how we agree that marketing cigarettes to kids is bad kind of thing?). We could reasonably say that we are willing to pay for content, we're just not attuned to seeing how "free" content is actually detrimental to us and is being monetized behind the scenes. At the same time, Google/Amazon latched on to it and are taking advantage of it for their own gains. Either way, we're stuck in a downward feedback loop that's only going to make this worse until one of the big players falls over.
- dazc 5y ago
  The likes of motorcycle and car magazines/review sites are also incentivised by money, it may not be quite so obvious how though? Let's say I want to do an honest review of bikes under $500, where am I going to get the bikes from in order to do this? Shall I go out and buy them?
  - Traster 5y ago
    This is covered by standard journalists all the time - Linus (from LTT) talks about this all the time. Of course manufacturers give samples to test, but that's table stakes, there is absolutely not an expectation of specific positive coverage.
prepend 5y ago
> There is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of 'best bikes under $500' for any reason other than this though? “Back in the olden days” people would write pages because they loved the subject area and wanted to share knowledge/show off/start conversations. So it was very common for people who were just really into bikes to spend some time sharing their thoughts on what the top 10 bikes under $500 were because they wanted to help people buy good bikes. There was no monetization, or at least direct monetization. Those sites may still be around, but monetization has driven low-quality content higher up in SEO so the bike lover (who probably doesn’t care about SEO) doesn’t get content seen.
- ackbar03 5y ago
  >There was no monetization, or at least direct monetization Maybe they can try affiliate links! I think that was how the "crappy" sites used to do it in the old days. I never really understood the whole seo game and if anyone actually made money or just pretended to make money so they can sell courses
  - prepend 5y ago
    I think some people like sharing knowledge. I keep a blog where I just write things that are interesting to me and maybe to others. I used to have affiliate links because I was playing around with stuff, but don’t think any have worked in 10+ years. I have no monetization plan or ever figure I’ll make money off the site. But it costs me nothing to run, so that’s ok. There are many sites like this, but they are much harder to find because Google isn’t able to differentiate meaningful content from the facade of meaningful content (ie, SEO). It’s like the degradation in academic papers where groups will reference each other like crazy to game rankings.

avipars 5y ago

I could say that affiliate marketing in general... wirecutter - NYT has a whole site and twitter feed for their "deals" with affiliate links

IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
They are pretty open about the business model, and to put a lot more work into the reviews than just generating a list of affiliate links 3ith the data available from Amazon‘s API: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/about/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/about/
oftenwrong 5y ago
The Wirecutter has been accused of changing their recommendations based on their ability to monetise product links as an affiliate: https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to-play-model https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to...
- ramphastidae 5y ago
  Wirecutter doesn’t do reviews of “the best x,” they do reviews of “the best x that can be purchased via an online store that offers adequate referral revenue to Wirecutter”

scwoodal 5y ago

I add “site:reddit.com” to consumer/product related Google searches. This usually gets me the quality information I’m looking for.

whatch 5y ago
Or simply add "Reddit" to your search query. The first result will be from Reddit. And there will be a URL to other results from there.
- r1ch 5y ago
  I see more and more queries suggesting autocompletion of "reddit" and similar sites these days. Google's default results are extremely poor quality for many queries.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
I guess many people do that, but it shows the review system failed miserably when you look for quality information on reddit. I mean, in theory, reddit would have all kinds of noise and fake opinions, whereas Amazon etc. should have only verified and curated reviews, including methodologies for spotting abuse and procedures for manual verification. Well, the economics of scale that drives them insane profits is also the cause they lost this battle.
- dageshi 5y ago
  Reddit is always going to be better. Niche subs are where actual experts who've tried entire ranges of products hang out, amazon is where one random guy bought their first crappy product and left a 5 star review because they don't actually know whether what they bought is good or not.
  - noneeeed 5y ago
    Or even worse, leaving a 5 star review because it is what they ordered but they haven't actually used it because it's a present for their nephew...

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

I think search is broken full stop for any search in the form "Best X in/for/under Y" - there are too many low quality sites publishing 'list' articles, which just link to items for sale that offer them affiliate commission. For the example of "bikes under $500" it's often better to do a google news search to get magazine/newspaper articles where they are more likely to have done actual reviews.

addingnumbers 5y ago
Totally agree, I've been impressed with how effective adding "-intitle:best" to a Google search is at filtering out SEO-gaming fluff

codingdave 5y ago

I believe both search and affiliate programs have flaws... but I didn't see anything that convinced me this is some conspiracy between the companies. I also don't have a problem with affiliate programs. If someone posts links that are relevant to the topic at hand, there is little harm in them getting a few cents from a purchase I would have made anyway. If anything, it is funding content creation in a way that works. That being said, the point of the article is 100% correct that low-effort, low-value review sites just to get affiliate links ranked in search results are problematic and annoying. I make a judgement call when I run into them - if they really did put in some effort and have decent reviews contrasting different items, I'll go ahead and click the link. They wrote content, the content was helpful, no problem. On the other hand, if it was just a list of links with no added value, I don't click the links. It is just as a easy to do my own search on a product name, or even copy the link and remove the affiliate tag. Like everything else in the world, nothing is black and white. The presence of some problematic sites doesn't invalidate an entire mechanism for funding content creation.

nuker 5y ago
> If anything, it is funding content creation in a way that works. Affiliate programs distort content, to the point of being useless, or justify making of outright fake content.

richardpetersen 5y ago

The reason affiliates always tend to use amazon's program is not because it has the highest pay outs. Instead its because Amazon converts really well.

SilkRoadie 5y ago

I would argue that google is being used incorrectly here. Google is specially being asked for a product list which meets a certain criteria. The user is asking Google to recommend the best bikes.. The user is actually looking for authoritative bicycle reviews to make a purchasing decision. Searching for “bicycle reviews” would give a far higher chance of finding what the user is after. They can then use the criteria on the review site to narrow down what they are after. There is also a limit to what searching will get you. Going to a bike shop will allow an expert in this subject matter to assess your personal requirements and advise accordingly. For a lot of things, going out and talking to someone will yield far better results than Google ever will.

whydid 5y ago
While I agree with you about the incorrect search being used, I disagree that bike review results will give anything more useful. Many "reviews" are also collections of affiliate links, disguised as a review.
nuker 5y ago
> Searching for “bicycle reviews” would give a far higher chance of finding what the user is after. Nope. Google will still give you dumb reviews pages full of “Check price on Amazon” affiliate links. What works for me is adding “site:reddit.com” or “forum” to search.
- _rs 5y ago
  Some communities have their own forums they use too, and I’ve only stumbled upon these by accident. It would be nice if there were an index somewhere that kept track of them.
- bagacrap 5y ago
  did you actually try that query? I just got lots of relatively high quality review sites/periodicals. I say "relatively" because even industry stalwarts like Bicycling Magazine, which has been around in print and/or online form for decades, are ad-driven and far from unbiased. But if you trust Consumer Reports or NY Times more, they're on the first page too.

wr3ck_face 5y ago

Does anyone know why this website is being blocked by the Indian government? "Your requested URL has been blocked as per the directions received from Department of Telecommunications, Government of India. Please contact administrator for more information."

pcdoodle 5y ago

Remember taking pride in being able to find anything with google? Now it feels like "as seen on TV" in the search results.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

killjoywashere 5y ago

It's also a rough time to be buying a bicycle. I bought 3 bikes (1 new, 2 used) this year and each one was a minor miracle.

mdolon 5y ago
I wrote this pre-pandemic, back in January of 2020. I was able to snag a bike at a used bike sale a few weeks after writing it. Congrats on your new bikes!

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

As for the search in question: instead of "best commuter bikes for under $500", do yourself a favor and buy a beater bike for $100-200. The comfort is the same if not higher, but you stop thinking about your bike at all, and if someone steals it you buy another one next day without shedding a tear. My favorite ones are by fahrradmanufaktur, very solid, a new one will cost you a few thousand bucks, but after 5-7 years it still feels fantastic and you can buy it for a fraction of the price.

mdolon 5y ago
I really was clueless at the time and figured it would take at least $400-500 to get a decent starter bike. Thankfully I wound up coming across a used bicycle sale in Brooklyn shortly after and picked up an old Giant for $150. Have probably done a couple of thousand miles on it since!
- hef19898 5y ago
  We have a small used bike shop nearby, damn great value for money! Bought a used Merida MTB for my so and a Bergamot each for my daughter and myself. Condition is close to new, cost in total 800 bucks, some smaller repairs included.
matsemann 5y ago
With the bike shortage the last two seasons, used bikes in OK condition can be almost more expensive than a new bike (since the new, unused bike is sold out everywhere). At least where I live, there is no chance to get what I would call a usable/durable bike for "$100-200" at the moment.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  I bought a couple of them and parked them in different areas of the city to make it easier to reach any location using the subway + bike combination. I choose the ones with flaws that would deter normal buyers but relatively easy to repair, or with a damaged part that I'd replace anyway. I asked a local repair shop if it's fine if I ask the seller to send a bike directly to them and they happily agreed. So I look for an occasion, buy it, they ship it to the repair shop, the shop guy calls me and we talk about what to repair/replace, and in a few days I have a nice bike that will last many years with proper maintenance without spending a fortune.

hesk 5y ago

I think a bike is one of those items that you have to try out before you buy it, so I would not buy it online and I also would not go to Google to research it (at least initially). When I was in the market for a new bike a few years ago, I looked at Yelp to find the 5-6 bicycle shops with the best rating in my city. Then I went to each shop and told them what I wanted from my bike and my budget. This process went very well. Not only am I supremely satisfied with my purchase, even after a couple of years, but I also found a new great bicycle shop that I go to for repairs and upgrades and stuff.

alistairSH 5y ago
I agree with try-before-you-buy for bicycles - size, style, etc make a massive difference in utility and comfort. But, how would somebody who only had a bike as a child know this? Google isn't telling them - it sends them to Amazon via listicles. If they happen to search "how to buy a bicycle" there are some potentially useful results. But, even if they do end up a bicycle shop, their likely to run into inventory problems - many bike shops simply don't have any bikes right now. So, it's back to Amazon, or Craigslist/FB Marketplace, or worse.

barrad0s 5y ago

There's also an even worse thing here. If you search for a product under shopping on google, something that is somewhat known like a certain TV model, and you'll see most SHOPPING results are from websites that actually don't sell anything, but rather will have a "product page" where either the buy button is disabled or redirects to amazon. They typically have much lower prices, or just low enough so you'll click.

Robotbeat 5y ago
I don’t understand why Google doesn’t make Google shopping not terrible. Big potential business value for them if people actually used it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
justaman 5y ago
From a certain perspective, you can argue Amazon has a monopoly on sales coming from search engines.

bloniac 5y ago

A huge number of developers at Amazon and Google are clapping their hands with glee when the read this…. It’s their jobs to get exactly this outcome. They’ll show your post to the boss to lock in their bonus. This is the prime purpose of these gigantic companies. Of course it works like that. The smartest software developers in the world dedicate their working lives to advertising.

oblio 5y ago
I don't get why you're downvoted. That's exactly why these things are failing.

Theodores 5y ago

First world problem really. Also people look for deals hence in this example a second hand bike is purchased. There is no 'title' with bicycles and anything second hand bought off someone you don't know has to be assumed to be stolen. The market for second hand bikes encourages bike theft. There are plenty of very good new bikes at almost all price points and the guy in the local bike shop can show you three bikes suited to your size, your use case and your budget. Docking about online doing your research is all very interesting but the guy in the bike shop will help you just fine without you being an armchair expert. No point ranting on about Amazon you just have to get away from the screen and get to the bike shop.

jsnell 5y ago

> I think the answer is because it’s not in their best interest to do so. They like that most consumers will look at these reviews, click through to Amazon and make their purchase with little hesitation. I don't understand the logic here. Why exactly would Google want people to thoughlessly click on Amazon affiliate links from other sites? There's no short-term beneft, since they don't get a cut. And there's no long-term benefit, since it just risks teaching people to go straight to Amazon for commercial searches.

mrobins 5y ago
I think it’s less in Google’s long term best interest and more a marriage of convenience. Hopefully a temporary one. Google increasingly wants users to find what they want on Google itself and not have to click through to the direct search results. Featured snippets are the strategy and these affiliate site listicles are crafted explicitly to be hoovered up as such by the algorithm. One hope is that long term Google improves quality-content detection and deprioritizes the garbage.
nuker 5y ago
> There's no short-term beneft, since they don't get a cut. But they do? IMHO some of the SEO techniques use direct payments to Google for keywords, results placement, etc.
- mminer237 5y ago
  You can buy an ad, but those are shown differently than actual results. You can't pay Google to improve your SEO.
  - nuker 5y ago
    I stand corrected, thanks
  - BrianOnHN 5y ago
    But those ads can increase the number & frequency of pages crawled by Google.

oneepic 5y ago

Slightly off-topic, but I have similar gripes with the Fandom wiki. I am frequently on the Fallout wiki there, but for most of the searches I run (e.g. for in-game characters or items) the first result is a link to a sponsor site. I keep seeing Amazon and Ebay among others. I can't adblock that as far as I know. (EDIT: Switched to uBlock Origin and this method does work on Chrome. Very happy now.)

blackbear_ 5y ago
> I can't adblock that as far as I know. Yes you can. uBlock's element picker [1] allows you to hide arbitrary portions of a webpage, and I assume (?) other ad blockers also allow you to insert custom rules. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Element-picker https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Element-picker

benrapscallion 5y ago

Neeva is good for such product searches.

flenserboy 5y ago

Google broke itself over a decade ago when they began giving you results either that their algorithms assumed you wanted or that they wanted you to have, period. Verbatim search hardly produces anything useful anymore, either. Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless.

danuker 5y ago
For this reason I started using Yandex. Few advertisers pay for non-Russian ads, and the results are better than DuckDuckGo (in my opinion).
cainxinth 5y ago
I take your point, but don’t you think you’re overstating things a bit? The internet is still incredibly useful and so is Google search (granted, it takes more effort and sophistication to avoid the spam).
- eddieh 5y ago
  I don't think its overstated. The web is broken and search especially so. Now days I look for curated list to find interesting webpages and topics. Google ruined itself years ago, or maybe "we" ruined it.
  - cainxinth 5y ago
    The original commenter said: "Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless." I agree that Google search has been coopted. It now requires a keener awareness of what is and isn't being artificially promoted. Is it annoying? Yes. Is it something that unsophisticated users fall prey to (by design)? Also sadly yes. But 'all but worthless'? That's a huge overstatement.
- flenserboy 5y ago
  I don't think I'm overstating things. Yes, the internet is useful, but consider how the ability to accurately search is the real key to the whole of it. As the original post points out, this hits us in day-to-day matters just as much as in trying to find/discover useful research on a particular topic. The simple fact is this: not only must nearly every link you click be viewed with suspicion, so must every search result you're given by Google, and pretty much every other engine. What is most useful is a presentation of naked results (with functional boolean operators, exclusions that work, a lack of "suggested" terms, etc.), but that doesn't shape and cause more interactions, direct people to the "proper" sites, or improve the bottom line. I remember the internet when it was usable for much more than consumption; it is only marginally so today.

paulvnickerson 5y ago

Whenever I want to make a purchase online, I search for "best _____" and add reddit as a keyword. Reading through a few threads on reddit will typically give me a pretty good idea of where to start.

jart 5y ago
If it weren't for Reddit, Stack Exchange, etc. nothing on the Internet would be organic anymore! Try https://millionshort.com/search?keywords=best%20road%20bikes&shopping=&country=&chat=&remove=0 https://millionshort.com/search?keywords=best%20road%20bikes... If you search Million Short then the top two results are (1) an actual bike store and (2) an actual bicycling magazine that's 100+ years old instead of seo spam. But you raise a much more important point: if you query the web like a stupid person then you'll get stupid results. The OP shouldn't have searched for "under 500" because good bikes under 500 are called used road bikes from a local shop or craigslist owner (as the author revealed and I discovered myself when I was younger c. 2006) so saying "under 500" is sort of like saying, "show me the cheap mass market bicycles please", because the number of people who want good bikes is small, but it's a really devoted group, who are willing to pay what people like us would pay for a good PC or even a car, so if you've already decided you want the chromebook of bikes, then amazon and google aren't doing you that much of a disservice, let's be fair.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

I'd like to note, donning my #2 at amzn hat again, that when the idea for affiliate sales originally came up, we certainly did imagine people creating pages with lists like "best bikes for under $500". However, I feel fairly confident in saying that nobody involved in that in the 95-96 timeframe was imagining that such pages would be created by anyone other than actual enthusiasts (probably a reflection of the state of the internet at the time). In retrospect, this was a profound failure of our imaginations back then. It's also somewhat damning that in the 25+ years since, nothing about the affiliate sales concept has been substantially modified to mitigate the weaponization of this by "best X for 202X" pages.

GoodJokes 5y ago
Failure of imagination of the bad things Amazon would go on to do seems like the hallmark of the early days. Great job. Did you also game out the exploitation of warehouse workers?
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  I left Amazon after 14 months because, indeed, the exploitation of warehouse workers was obviously a part of the company's future. Didn't want to be a part of that.
baggy_trough 5y ago
An actual "best X for 202X" page is extremely useful; the problem is that there are no search signals to distinguish it from a trivially created spam mockery.
- antihero 5y ago
  There's consumer advocate sites like https://www.which.co.uk/ https://www.which.co.uk/ that are pretty cool. I'd be interesting in knowing other trustable sources, mind.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago

sMarsIntruder 5y ago

That spam level on search engines is increasing year on year, is a fact. It’s also a fact the Google keeps rolling out several updates but the overall quality is getting worse no matter what.

TonyTrapp 5y ago

I ran into a similar thing last year when researching replacement LED spots for my ceiling lights. Most review sites used a similiar headline like "best LED spots in 2020" and they were all comparison tables featuring only products available on Amazon, most of them being manufactured by brands that noone probably ever heard of and that are only available on Amazon, and it was all the same basic crap. Not sure how but eventually I found much a better brand with higher-quality LEDs.

iamben 5y ago

We're going to end up going back to community sites. Reddit is obviously the good example here, but you can guarantee if you find a 'racing bike' forum (or whatever), take the time to join up, search, ask - someone with a passion for it will give you a great, well researched list because they love it and take pride from knowing. Exactly the same as when I ask my friend who's passionate about wine for his recommendation for a £15 bottle of red, and he'll happily waste 20 minutes of his day writing a list and sending me links. I know the pleasure he gets when I message and go "thank you! This is amazing!" Also just to add - this is exactly why those "get paid to recommend things to your friends" startups never work. Because the minute we know that the 'friend' on Facebook who's shouting about the great bottle of wine is getting paid £1 per sale we deliberately don't buy it. (As opposed to the "next time you're in Tesco, pick up a bottle of XYZ, it's great" message - when we probably do.)

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
I want you to be right but the GME and AMC nonsense doesn’t instill a lot of confidence that Reddit isn’t being gamed already by automated accounts. I’ve had my own comment altered a little and regurgitated by a bot before, which was extremely creepy. But you are right that the signal to noise is at least better on Reddit.
- city41 5y ago
  I do think it is slowly deteriorating though. I've noticed it on indie gaming subreddits. A dev will announce a new game and I suspect a lot of the comments are fake. Maybe not bots just yet, probably more likely the dev gathered a large group of friends to help out. But it wouldn't surprise me if this type of promotion became more and more bot driven as time goes on.
- hectormalot 5y ago
  I don’t know. It depends on the ‘quality’ of the community. Eg when I’m considering a new IT tool, I tend to search ‘!hn $tool’ just to see what the comments on HN are like, as it’s the most reasonable signal I can find vs google. Similar example, when searching for a good EV charging pass my first go-to were the Tweakers.net forums. It’s a place where the general IT crowd of the Netherlands hangs out and indeed someone already wrote a very extensive topic on the EV charging world, the business models, what to watch out for, etc. I suppose if you have the same for cooking, cycling, cars, etc. It might actually end up going that direction for more people. As a community becomes higher quality though, it also becomes more interesting for scammers to abuse. (The Bitcoin Reddits you mentioned are a great example). Good moderation is key I think.

zwaps 5y ago

Hm, this is not really news, but perhaps it's the first time I consciously think about it. The article is right. I used to search Google for what the best X is. At some point. Indeed, I also used to search amazon and read the reviews. Now, and for what feels like a while, I am not doing that anymore. Like, at all. And this is not a decision I consciously made. If I want to know what the best dishwasher is, I am not going to amazon. I am not putting it into Google, simply because it's all affiliate links all the way down. I either read professional reviews (like non-profit and established test companies, like Warentest here in Germany) or I ask the community somewhere. Google and Amazon have conditioned me to subconsciously not use them anymore for that purpose. Very interesting.

RandomLensman 5y ago
Buried in there is also the fact that getting good and reliable information might indeed not be cheap (could be paid for by the public/donors if it is a non-profit, but still costs). In the earlier days of the web and search that was not so much the case, I reckon. For example, a lot more paywalls than 10 years ago.
Robotbeat 5y ago
I use Reddit a lot for this. But this is an arms race with SEOs and bots. Eventually Reddit will probably be worthless for this.
- lolsal 5y ago
  What makes you think what you're reading on reddit is not already socially engineered advertisements and bot spam? People have been paying attractive people to "hang out" in bars and pitch gizmos and doo-dads for decades (citation needed); absolutely there are accounts on reddit shilling gizmos across relevant subs.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    Oh sure, but there's still some use in it. Eventually, it'll be all bots and no use.

ds 5y ago

Affiliate links arent the problem per-se. Shitty content is. Google is supposed to penalize sites like this with lousy, thin reviews and promote things like wirecutter and whatnot. I much prefer affiliate links to the alternative: Unblockable ads and paywalls.

okareaman 5y ago

> I wound up buying a used bike from a local shop I think this is a positive outcome. Google and Amazon are driving people to shop locally with their tricks. Same thing happened to me and I couldn't be happier I bought an electric bike from a local shop. I probably paid a little more, but I made a new friend. The local shop owner is a really cool guy who was interested in meeting my needs, not in selling me his most profitable bike.

orangegreen 5y ago

Does anyone know any good alternate search keywords when trying to find "Best x under x?" Content marketers already know that people search "Best x" when doing shopping research, so I wonder if there are alternative keywords that have less spammy results.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

So here's a side-question. The original key idea behind Google's approach to search was page rank : how many, and what kinds, of other sites linked to this one (and potentially, in what context). Does anyone think that this can possibly be at the core of Google's page rank anymore? Most pages don't have any significant number of links any more, and if they do, they are presumably garbage most of the time. Who is out there writing articles called "How to find the best bicycle for under $500" and providing links to excellent, current reviews of bicycles under $500? The answer might not be "nobody", but my instinct is that it's so small that it's effectively the same thing. Consequently, at some point, Google switched from trying to leverage human judgement (i.e. how many other people link to a page), and have been forced (?) to replace that with their own assessment of a page based largely on its own content, metadata and outbound links. Whereas in the 2000's, you could blame people for crappy results from a Google search ("why do people keep linking to that stupid article"), at this point it seems to me that everything, absolutely everything about Google results can be laid at Google's feet.

deleted 5y ago
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nwienert 5y ago
I agree with much of this. I believe the antidote to this is simply acknowledging small communities curate the best content, so essentially marry many small decentralized communities on a searchable platform. Anonymous but karma/identity weighted profiles, curating and debating lists of their favorite things around a single topic. Aggregate them into a single master index with nice UI, then pay out equitably based on performance. There’s a lot of questions on preventing spam and fraud, and I think the further away you get from “high ticket products” the more you avoid that problem, but it can’t be worse than Google: in one you’re relying solely on magical AI and links, the other you can have as much magical AI and links as you want, but you also have user accounts which maybe invited each other and can vouch for each other at a cost, votes that can be weighed by all sorts of factors, and basically a much richer graph of self-moderating people to back the index. Working on something like this at the moment!
- 5y ago

fidesomnes 5y ago

Do a Google image search on white families and witness how white men, and white families in particular, are memory holed.

JohnBooty 5y ago

I reject the author's conclusion. Either this is a non sequiter, or I'm missing a major piece of the puzzle. How is it that a search giant like Google, with thousands of brilliant minds, can’t help me find good products to buy? I think the answer is because it’s not in their best interest to do so. They like that most consumers will look at these reviews, click through to Amazon and make their purchase with little hesitation. Sorry, but what am I missing here? How does Google benefit from a clueless user thinking this article is reliable, clicking on an affiliate link, and buying a bike at Amazon? As I understand it, Google derives value from their search engine in the following ways: 1. Directly, via paid ads and product placement. 2. Indirectly, by simply being useful, which means people will enjoy using Google search results, which means they will use them again in the future, which is what allows them to sell ads and gather data on users. So as far as I can see it's definitely in Google's interest to provide good and useful search results.

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
> So as far as I can see it's definitely in Google's interest to provide good and useful search results. A shame Google didn't get this memo, or buried it somewhere.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  It's so fundamental to their business though, right? They are fundamentally a data mining and advertising operation and that only works if people find them useful and therefore use them so that they can be data-mined and advertised to. I guess maybe Google just feels it's an unsolvable problem, or has a backdoor agreement with Amazon, or feels they are so synonymous with search that only a fraction of users would ever user another search engine even if the quality of their results has become awful
  - WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
    How many hairs do you need to remove from a man's head before you can call him bald? Many chain restaurants follow this scheme: when they appear and need to make a good name for themselves, they are hell bent on the quality of food and the the customer experience. It's important for them to get the word of mouth marketing. But after they establish themselves firmly and start to grow, the bottom line becomes a priority, and they start cutting corners ever so slightly. The portions become smaller but the prices hike up. They start skimping on sauces. One day you discover that the garlic sauce is no longer made in house, but is of the same variety that is purchased in bulk for hot dogs at gas stations. But the momentum is still going. And many other chains in the same price range either don't make the same kind of food, or are worse still. So you have no choice until a new restaurant starts that needs to carve a niche and beat it's competition.

markstos 5y ago

I experience the same. Frequently run into "Top 10 reviews" that appear to be written without the author having having possessed the product and then link off to Amazon. Time wasters.

djoldman 5y ago

Does anyone have any tips/tricks on how to search using google to surface more relevant results besides appending site:reddit.com? I also remember the past magically search days fondly..

mikevin 5y ago
I'm starting to avoid Google search alltogether but my best trick is including a really specific term that SEO would avoid because it might not be familiar to the reader. 90% of the time it will ignore the term but somewhere on the page there will be a page where it says it didnt match that term and if i want to search for matches that do include that keyword. That sometimes improves the results. Note: the query will look the same as quoting the term but in my experience doing that initially is simply ignores. All the old dorking/google-fu operators have been ignored by Google for some time now.

rottc0dd 5y ago

I do not know if this is relevant to this discussion, but amazon search results in amazon.com are really bad. And they are just supposed to give me product details from the key words I give. I have to do a google search to get the relevant search result for an amazon product page.

only_as_i_fall 5y ago

I think the fundamental problem is that any sufficiently influential system which provides consumer information on products or services becomes an obvious target for those sellers and service providers to try and game. I think there are basically only 2 ways around this 1) a consumer reports type model were consumers must trust a central authority to be inviolable. 2) legislation that harshly punishes companies who try to influence their own reviews. These would likely be ineffective unless they were incredibly stringent. Is there a more reasonable model that can avoid being gamed though? I feel like more and more I have to rely on word of mouth about products which isn't great for different reasons.

efleurine 5y ago

People need to to become more informed themselves instead of being ready to click through the first line of result. May be we need more informed people and less SMARTphones.

hatsunearu 5y ago

I often search with "reddit" at the end of queries like this to get some good opinions. I'm sure a lot of you know this already though, because "[question] reddit" shows up as recommended search all the time.

elthor89 5y ago

This sounds so familiar. I used to scour the internet for reviews before buying anything. Analysis paralysis is real, and I sometimes just give up buying at all. Over the past years, I found more bad review websites than helpful ones. I doubt there are any real unbiased reviews. Go to google, enter the ad trap Go to your local store, you have to deal with the sales target of the store. Go to Reddit or a forum, and the people there just want to justify their purchase. It is all fine as long as you know it. The authors solution to just go to a local bike shop and buy a bike is in my opinion still a reliable best. I assume he got the opportunity to test ride the bike before purchasing it. My new approach is to write down what I want from the product. This gives me clarity. I still read reviews but take them less serious. I either order online and once I receive my package I sent it back or keep it. Alternatively I just go to a physical store and try it out before buying it.

taeric 5y ago

This feels like a misunderstanding of what it means to have a good bike. If you aren't a regular rider, odds are high that no review will actually be relevant. From how you want to be seated to how hard you can take a climb, bikes are stupid personal. Even tire choice is one that will float above entry level concerns. Ignoring that bikes are heavy in ebike mode right now. And reviews are, by definition, expensive. I can tell you that I like my bike. I can't compare it to more than a couple of others, because I can't afford that many bikes.

bluetwo 5y ago

At some point Google is going to let you simply narrow your search to the dozen or so sites you regularly visit. The rest of the web, outside the top 100, is dying.

evancordell 5y ago

It gets even worse / weirder - I've found if you search for products that might not even exist, you get made up lists of products. A while ago, I wondered if there were such a thing as a microwave + toaster oven combo (there are several convection oven + microwave combos on the market, but none can toast like a toaster oven). Here's the top non-sponsered result: https://www.chefspencil.com/10-best-microwave-toaster-oven-combos-in-2020/ https://www.chefspencil.com/10-best-microwave-toaster-oven-c... And the second result: https://thebrilliantkitchen.com/best-microwave-toaster-oven-combo/ https://thebrilliantkitchen.com/best-microwave-toaster-oven-... Sure sounds like there's at least 10 of these items in existence for me to choose from - but none of the items in these lists are actually both microwaves and toaster ovens.

valdiorn 5y ago
I've even had this with mis-spelled words (i.e. "the best Bivycle of 2021" or something like that); I wonder how the f*ck those sites are being generated.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

why would anyone take traffic estimates from a site like SimilarWeb as legit? All those kinds of traffic rankers like Alexa etc have been uncredible for like 20 years. There's too much bot traffic out there now for hits to be filtered reasonably by an external third party

jurassic 5y ago

I would love if sites containing too many affiliate links were de-ranked in google. Google doesn't get a cut of the affiliate revenue, so I don't understand their incentive to let this kind of spam proliferate.

donmcronald 5y ago
I would pay to have every page with an affiliate link removed from results.
rchaud 5y ago
As long as the carousel of ads and products are shown at the top of the screen, it's all good. Google has monopoly mindshare, it doesn't care if the organic results suck. What are users going to do, go to Bing?

stuaxo 5y ago

Also, ebay.

unnouinceput 5y ago

It's missing a (2020).

gdsdfe 5y ago

I say it time and time again Google is an ad company not a search company they just happen to be doing search

rchaud 5y ago
Precisely. I imagine people in this thread have never opened Google Ads in their life. There has been plenty of improvement when it comes to their search ads tools.

rchaud 5y ago

Affiliate links are the reason anybody even makes a website anymore. The era of personal websites made for intellectual curiosity and expression are long gone. It's not just websites though, Youtube and IG are filled with them as well. Basically, if you have any audience at all, it's time to cash in on them by polluting your online presence with these dumb links.

newfonewhodis 5y ago

Step 1: Go to a local store Step 2: ?? Step 3: Throw your computer in the trash I recently did this with some badminton equipment I wanted to buy. Incentives online are terrible. I went to the pro-shop in my club, talked to a coach who's seen me play and he gave me a few options one of which I ended up buying from them.

_greim_ 5y ago

Controversial opinion: this is the system working. These spammy affiliate link sites work well enough that Google lists them, people use them, and bicycles get sold. It isn't globally optimal, but it's locally optimal given a culture where online users refuse to pay for content.

notacoward 5y ago

I've been noticing this too. I don't even remember what I was researching, but I was looking for "best of" lists like OP and I kept finding affiliate-link farms in all sorts of weird places. One was a recipe site, I think, and I definitely wasn't looking for anything even remotely food related at the time. The root of my problem IMO is that Google never came up with a proper way to search by time. Same problem if you want to search for "new video games" or new anything really. You can't specify it as a time constraint. You have to put the year in as a regular search term, which is super easy for the link farmers to game.

cratermoon 5y ago

Oh yeah, search results are now all about selling stuff. I said as much on a similar story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27999002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27999002

6510 5y ago

I use to make and search for pages like: "List of foo with bar" trying to make the list as complete as I could. A bit like a single page web directory. Google would then complain that I had to many links on the pages and de-list them. When seriously researching anything at all you want the full picture of things out there. You cant work with random joe's top 10 affiliate links.

wellthisishn 5y ago

Didn't this concept ruin the internet a long time ago? Like think about the web before AdSense?

MattyRad 5y ago

Listicles have gotten on my nerves, I googled 'how to remove listicles from search results' and got, yes, 2 listicles in the SERP. I tinkered with ddgr[1] and jq for removing listicles with some success, if someone wants to pick up where I left off: `ddgr --expand --noprompt --json 'best bicycles under 500' | jq --raw-output '.[] | select(.title | test("^(?!\\d.$)."))' | jq --raw-output '. | [.title, .url]| @tsv'` [1] https://github.com/jarun/ddgr https://github.com/jarun/ddgr