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When I searched it "warmest winter coats", I get: first result is a list from a blog by some "Emergency prep guy" it basically lists 27 coats with information.

by mda 5y ago

When I searched it "warmest winter coats", I get: first result is a list from a blog by some "Emergency prep guy" it basically lists 27 coats with information. Second result is RT online with black Friday recommendations Third is oprah daily with recommendations and shop links So, reddit is also, as you said, full of false information + astroturfing as well. Besides not everyone is interested in diving into reddit rabbithole to find information on warm coats. What do we want google to do? It tries to blend whatever is available, I don't think google got worse on this particularly, but it is probably a hopeless pursuit considering the status of the web. As for forums, adding "forum" at the end sees to work, but I agree it would be nice to have the option in the toolbox.

notJim 5y ago
> first result is a list from a blog by some "Emergency prep guy" it basically lists 27 coats with information. Most of the time, this is just a list of coats someone googled and copy-pasted info from the marketing pages. This page is an affiliate-marketing site masquerading as a review site. Not sure if specifically that page is, but that's what the majority of "product review" results in Google are nowadays.
- mda 5y ago
  I know these review pages are usually affiliate links, but the problem is, when the subject is something like this (commercial interest), it is extremely hard to find anything that is objective. Emergency prep guy seems like at least owns or knows about the products he lists, however he also discloses his site is owned by a company which is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. So maybe Google should stop feeding this affiliate spam loop and try to create algorithms that try to actually understand which information is based on personal experiences and not created by financial interest. This is a very hard task to do and also prone to manipulation as well. In the end maybe Google needs some real competition for this to happen.
  - notJim 5y ago
    > So maybe Google should stop feeding this affiliate spam loop and try to create algorithms that try to actually understand which information is based on personal experiences and not created by financial interest As you say, this is harder to do well than it sounds. There are definitely a lot of hobbyist types who review things and make a side (or even major) income from affiliate sales. With human judgment, it's quite easy to differentiate the honest hobbyist from the spam sites. I fear that any automated attempt to punish the spam sites would end up hurting the hobbyists more.

by mda 5y ago

notJim 5y ago

> first result is a list from a blog by some "Emergency prep guy" it basically lists 27 coats with information. Most of the time, this is just a list of coats someone googled and copy-pasted info from the marketing pages. This page is an affiliate-marketing site masquerading as a review site. Not sure if specifically that page is, but that's what the majority of "product review" results in Google are nowadays.

mda 5y ago
I know these review pages are usually affiliate links, but the problem is, when the subject is something like this (commercial interest), it is extremely hard to find anything that is objective. Emergency prep guy seems like at least owns or knows about the products he lists, however he also discloses his site is owned by a company which is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. So maybe Google should stop feeding this affiliate spam loop and try to create algorithms that try to actually understand which information is based on personal experiences and not created by financial interest. This is a very hard task to do and also prone to manipulation as well. In the end maybe Google needs some real competition for this to happen.
- notJim 5y ago
  > So maybe Google should stop feeding this affiliate spam loop and try to create algorithms that try to actually understand which information is based on personal experiences and not created by financial interest As you say, this is harder to do well than it sounds. There are definitely a lot of hobbyist types who review things and make a side (or even major) income from affiliate sales. With human judgment, it's quite easy to differentiate the honest hobbyist from the spam sites. I fear that any automated attempt to punish the spam sites would end up hurting the hobbyists more.