<story><title>Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it</title><url>http://mdolon.com/essays/amazon-has-ruined-search-and-google-is-in-on-it</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>keanebean86</author><text>Are those sites generated by bots now? They always seem to just be the top x results if you search on Amazon directly.</text></item><item><author>PaulDavisThe1st</author><text>I&amp;#x27;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 &amp;quot;best bikes for under $500&amp;quot;. 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).&lt;p&gt;In retrospect, this was a profound failure of our imaginations back then. It&amp;#x27;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 &amp;quot;best X for 202X&amp;quot; pages.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jeltz</author><text>I would guess most are written by humans. I know a lot of affiliates (mostly gambling but also finance and shopping) and most of their stuff is produced manually. There is some more automation these days but the industry is surprisingly manual.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it</title><url>http://mdolon.com/essays/amazon-has-ruined-search-and-google-is-in-on-it</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>keanebean86</author><text>Are those sites generated by bots now? They always seem to just be the top x results if you search on Amazon directly.</text></item><item><author>PaulDavisThe1st</author><text>I&amp;#x27;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 &amp;quot;best bikes for under $500&amp;quot;. 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).&lt;p&gt;In retrospect, this was a profound failure of our imaginations back then. It&amp;#x27;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 &amp;quot;best X for 202X&amp;quot; pages.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mtoddsmith</author><text>The reviews are usually somewhat accurate but only include items found on Amazon. So I&amp;#x27;m guessing they hire people to write the reviews.</text></comment>