<story><title>Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories</title><url>https://twitter.com/mwseibel/status/1477701120319361026</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>23B1</author><text>Sorry I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now, where often the worst products &amp;amp; services are not the best, and often times criminally bad.&lt;p&gt;As an example, I used them for moving services for a state-to-state move. Turns out the top three or four moving services are merely dispatchers run by a single company, run by a convicted felon out of Florida under a rotating number of businesses and cutouts.&lt;p&gt;When I contacted Consumer Reports to let them know about the many tens of thousands of complaints about the companies they were ranking highest, they referred me to their attorney.</text></item><item><author>codingdave</author><text>If you want to solve the problem of product research in an old-school way, Consumer Reports still exists. Their business model for almost a century has been to produce independent reviews of products, and charge for the reviews. It is also run as a non-profit. I&amp;#x27;m honestly surprised how little I hear about them. Not that any organization is perfect, but they have been the poster child of success via paid content since the 1930s.&lt;p&gt;It also makes me think that part of the problem is not only that Google&amp;#x27;s results are getting worse, it is that much of the population goes to the internet for all problems. Whether it is googling or asking on social media... the &amp;quot;front-line&amp;quot; information on the internet is simply not reliable anymore.</text></item><item><author>littlecranky67</author><text>Just researched good&amp;#x2F;quality crafting printers yesterday. Search results were mostly blogs and crappy websites that offered obviously no insights but were just SEO optimized to direct you to their Amazon affiliate links. Especially sad since those affiliate links to Amazon mostly resulted in &amp;quot;This product is currently not available&amp;quot; sites.&lt;p&gt;Repeated my search on Youtube to find reviews or unboxing. Most video search results were basically &amp;quot;Youtube SEO&amp;quot; again - the most viewed&amp;#x2F;top-ranked videos did never show a single actual print run or even the printer available. It was mostly marketing websites turned into video (slowly scrolling&amp;#x2F;moving over product description or pictures clearly taken from the web). And of course, affiliate links in the description.&lt;p&gt;The web has become a crappy place to research products as long as money can be made with those through affiliations. I wonder if outlawing affiliate marketing would make the world a better place.&lt;p&gt;P.S: Whats most ridiculous about my Youtube Printer research experience, the best and most helpful video was a sales video from a home shopping TV station [0], where they actually showed some printing action and handling of one of the models I was interested in.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=ytMXgjCReO0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=ytMXgjCReO0&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tablespoon</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; If you want to solve the problem of product research in an old-school way, Consumer Reports still exists. Their business model for almost a century has been to produce independent reviews of products, and charge for the reviews. It is also run as a non-profit.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Sorry I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now, where often the worst products &amp;amp; services are not the best, and often times criminally bad.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; As an example, I used them for moving services for a state-to-state move. Turns out the top three or four moving services are merely dispatchers run by a single company, run by a convicted felon out of Florida under a rotating number of businesses and cutouts.&lt;p&gt;Honestly, &amp;quot;moving companies&amp;quot; is not a category that seems like it would be in Consumer Reports&amp;#x27; wheelhouse, and I&amp;#x27;m surprised they offered any recommendations in that area at all.&lt;p&gt;Also, your anecdote doesn&amp;#x27;t really support the notion that they&amp;#x27;re &amp;quot;pay-to-play, just that they did a bad job in some category.&lt;p&gt;Are you actually thinking of the Better Business Bureau but got it mixed up with Consumer reports?  I would expect the BBB to rate moving services and I&amp;#x27;ve heard that they have some kind of membership program for businesses that seems to allow better control over complaints, which is pretty close to &amp;quot;pay-to-play.&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories</title><url>https://twitter.com/mwseibel/status/1477701120319361026</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>23B1</author><text>Sorry I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now, where often the worst products &amp;amp; services are not the best, and often times criminally bad.&lt;p&gt;As an example, I used them for moving services for a state-to-state move. Turns out the top three or four moving services are merely dispatchers run by a single company, run by a convicted felon out of Florida under a rotating number of businesses and cutouts.&lt;p&gt;When I contacted Consumer Reports to let them know about the many tens of thousands of complaints about the companies they were ranking highest, they referred me to their attorney.</text></item><item><author>codingdave</author><text>If you want to solve the problem of product research in an old-school way, Consumer Reports still exists. Their business model for almost a century has been to produce independent reviews of products, and charge for the reviews. It is also run as a non-profit. I&amp;#x27;m honestly surprised how little I hear about them. Not that any organization is perfect, but they have been the poster child of success via paid content since the 1930s.&lt;p&gt;It also makes me think that part of the problem is not only that Google&amp;#x27;s results are getting worse, it is that much of the population goes to the internet for all problems. Whether it is googling or asking on social media... the &amp;quot;front-line&amp;quot; information on the internet is simply not reliable anymore.</text></item><item><author>littlecranky67</author><text>Just researched good&amp;#x2F;quality crafting printers yesterday. Search results were mostly blogs and crappy websites that offered obviously no insights but were just SEO optimized to direct you to their Amazon affiliate links. Especially sad since those affiliate links to Amazon mostly resulted in &amp;quot;This product is currently not available&amp;quot; sites.&lt;p&gt;Repeated my search on Youtube to find reviews or unboxing. Most video search results were basically &amp;quot;Youtube SEO&amp;quot; again - the most viewed&amp;#x2F;top-ranked videos did never show a single actual print run or even the printer available. It was mostly marketing websites turned into video (slowly scrolling&amp;#x2F;moving over product description or pictures clearly taken from the web). And of course, affiliate links in the description.&lt;p&gt;The web has become a crappy place to research products as long as money can be made with those through affiliations. I wonder if outlawing affiliate marketing would make the world a better place.&lt;p&gt;P.S: Whats most ridiculous about my Youtube Printer research experience, the best and most helpful video was a sales video from a home shopping TV station [0], where they actually showed some printing action and handling of one of the models I was interested in.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=ytMXgjCReO0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=ytMXgjCReO0&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>windexh8er</author><text>&amp;gt; Sorry I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now, where often the worst products &amp;amp; services are not the best, and often times criminally bad.&lt;p&gt;Agreed. As a PSA do not use the True Car services that are &amp;quot;included&amp;quot; in a membership. It&amp;#x27;s basically a free pass to sell all of the contact information CR has on you to any dealership that&amp;#x27;s paying them for leads. You will be hounded for weeks if you try to use that service. I recently found out, through a family member, that the deceptive practice still exists when they were trying to get actual dealer invoices (which CR used to provide, but no longer does).  I cannot &lt;i&gt;not recommend&lt;/i&gt; CR enough.</text></comment>