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My default for those kinds of queries now is “<item> reddit”. Google results are generally poor otherwise. I’m not sure if this is because their algorithms are gamed or if it’s just because the internet outside of the main website hubs is just generally low quality (most high quality content has moved to hubs like reddit).

It’s s sad state of affairs for product search. I do the same (site:reddit) and I’m almost certain most people do too.

Google search I guess is good for entertainment search or “buzzy” things like whatever is trending on the trendsetting social networks of the day, but regular search is too spammy and farmed stuff. Often it’s junk.

I don’t think most people do, because if they did, Reddit would also be gamed.

Not saying it is, but, how would you know it isn't?

I imagine that either "they" (the advertisers/companies) have either already figured this out and are learning how to leave grassroots-looking comments, or they will pretty soon.

I don’t know for sure, and I bet some of it is gamed (all the popular AMA type and celebrity worship or marketing crap sure is), but I think I’ve been able to glean some real comments in the niche sections, based on the history of people giving recommendations or multiple threads over the years with similar conclusions.

I think it's more the bot upvoting comments that happen to be favorable to your product than actually leaving fake comments.

Reddit is definitely being gamed, started 1-2 years ago. And it's a lot harder / impossible to identify fake recommendations, so I'm very suspicious of it.

Reddit is certainly gamed. Not on everything, not as widespread as SEO, but I've definitely seen it before.

I do this for almost everything not just products. Reddit is a useful place to find real humans discussing something on the internet, but also at a simple beginner friendly level. Usually there are more specialized forums (esp for something like espresso) but they require excessive time or expertise to understand. On the other hand if you want a deep discussion reddit can be hit or miss.

True there are niche blogs for enthusiast hobbyist interests, but sometimes I need to find a good <some household item>. Reddit’s got better info than most non-reddit google results.

Reddit reviews are generally a pretty good source to find out what the flaws of a product are. I like to work out what the most common ways the product fails and how possible it is to fix them. I made the mistake of buying a pair of skullcandy headphones and after a month the plastic cracked and then I checked reddit and saw pretty much everyone who has this pair has had the same bit of plastic crack.

I think forums in general (not only reddit) are the best sources to find realistic info about almost any subject. Holiday resorts, cars, electronics, movies, education and more. You get a lot of subjective opinions, just like here. But all together they form a much better overview than most text or video reviews

The problem is they do not work for items that are niche. If you find anything, the chances are the review is not in depth or way too subjective and potentially from a person without experience in comparing like products.

Getting a list of hard faults is useful though not exhaustive.

There's the other extreme, relying too much on direct measurements, which can happen at highest end when we don't know which measurements are relevant in what way. (Examples would be mostly luxury - audio equipment, cars, yachts.) A specialist may be required to make sense of these and they are not easily vetted or found.

i guess i was naive in thinking i was the only one!

It's just a matter of time until the "marketers" catch on. Maybe they already know and just haven't found a way to prove the business case because there's no easy way to measure how much some locked Reddit thread from a few years ago influences buying decisions.

I'm curious to see what kind of innuendo they invent for "astroturfing Reddit reviews".

I believe we're already past that point. Search for the term "reputation management". Some companies ARE willing to pay money to rebut a negative viewpoint with a human voice, and Reddit is by no means immune to this.

I don't think the question should be "if" it is happening, but how far some companies go (behind-the-scenes) to use human voices not only defend but advance their position.

On reddit today someone asked how much karma is worth or something to that effect. It could be worth a great deal to a marketer. Someone with an early sign up date and lots of karma could easily sell them selves to a marketer.

I sense reddit is full of sock puppets and sell outs. How can it not be?

They've definitely caught on. Depending on the community, lots of bots are appearing to shill for specific brands, some better than others. Example: /r/malelivingspace has a big interest in Eames Lounge Chairs, and every time they get mentioned, a few new accounts pop up like clockwork to say how much they love their specific brand censored replica lounger. A ton of other random sites get these astroturf responses too, if they talk about it.

The worst part is that if they were a bit more skilled about it, it would be indistinguishable from an actual recommendation. Give it another few years.

Yeah I do this on almost every search

This. There's some really knowledgeable people over in /r/coffee that set me straight when picking out my espresso machine and grinder.

I've found that highly-developed wikis on certain subreddits feel more genuine and trustworthy than anything else out there.

I also search for <item> sucks as part of my due diligence.

https://www.millionshort.com/ Can be a big help here - search without the top million (or 100k etc) results - the SEO driven and commercial giants. Results vary, but I find it really useful when the main results are all engagement ad driven crap.

Some of the old-school web is still around, it's just down on page 20+ of Google and Bing.

I really like this idea -- it seems like it would be impossible to optimize both for Google and something like this

!mill in DDG :)

I imagine if everyone starts doing this, Reddit will suffer the exact same fate as the internet described here.

To me this feels a bit like saying the music scene used to be better but now it's all calculated pop garbage. But really the music scene is bigger and more diverse than ever, it's just that pop music is what you'll find on the front page if you will.

The surface of anything, be it a city, street, store, product, hobby, etc, will always be susceptible to marketing and manipulation.

If you first-result your way to visit a new country you can easily end up flying to its main city, take an extremely expensive taxi from the airport to some luxurious looking hotel, where a tour company has scheduled your entire stay in various touristic areas and restaurants.

Some people enjoy this experience, and there's nothing wrong with it, but it's a typical first-result experience of traveling.

> golden age of espresso machine reviews

Probably when the first search result was a hobby page maintained by an espresso machine enthusiast. Those days ended early, but I remember the pre-commercial Web and it was a very different place.

I remember using a work sponsored subscription to Compuserve back in the day, and finding it incredibly useful. Signal to noise ratio was awesome (for a pretty narrow set of subject areas). I guess there’s something to be said - in certain domains - for a real, direct cost, acting as a barrier to bots and “frivolous” use. Having to pay to publish (and to consume) separates the diamonds from the diarrhoea. However this is really just saying that “walled gardens” are nice. I don’t think a return to this approach is viable except in specific knowledge domains (where the knowledge is explicitly highly valued). Espresso machine reviews (as per example floating around in this thread) may not be such a domain.

Companies have deep marketing pockets and can therefore afford to saturate walled gardens protected by payment with shit.

An opportunity for a different kind of search.

SEO is tuned for Google, making it the inevitable victim of its own success.

Let a thousand algorithms bloom! Maybe we'll get a variety of search engine styles, in the same way we have different blood types to frustrate blood parasites.

> Differing views and solutions to national policy were encouraged based on the famous expression by Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong: "The policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science".The movement was in part a response to the demoralization of intellectuals, who felt estranged from the Communist Party.

> After this brief period of liberalization, Mao cracked down on those who criticized the communist regime.

This is just a ploy by Google to flush out dissenters.

I don't trust general impressions about whether things are getting better or worse. Maybe our expectations when it comes to always finding specialized information on the Internet have gradually increased without our really noticing it?

In the early days of the Internet, for example, I wouldn't expect specialized information about, say, car repair to be found online anywhere, because the people who obsessed about that sort of thing weren't online. You did find some really specialized stuff, but it was more serendipity and hit-and-miss. You couldn't count on finding what you need.

These days, we tend to assume it's all out there, somewhere, and we should be able to find it with a simple search, assuming we can figure out the right keywords.

Good quality sources of information were rare enough and difficult enough to find that one actually made the effort to use, organize, and jealously guard bookmarks. You actually had to dig through and crawl the links yourself, so when you found something, you bookmarked it lest you never find it again.

I don't remember the last time I bothered to bookmark anything that way.

Add "forum" to your google searches. You'd find genuine reviews here: http://coffeegeek.com/forums/espresso/machines

America's Test Kitchen does the best appliance reviews IMO, not sure if they cover espresso, but their pick for drip coffee machines was spot on for me.

"Business" idea: A search engine that searches just user comments and reviews (on HN, Reddit, Amazon, Google Maps, etc etc).

Advanced Search

Out of curiosity how would create an advanced search string for this?

Trial and error, something like

"espresso machine" review OR recommend site:reddit.com

or

"espresso machine" review OR recommend site:news.ycombinator.com

works well

Sorry, got distracted earlier.

What I mean was: it’d be good if there were more options via, say, drop down menus, or whatever.

I vaguely recall this being a thing in some distant past?

This has been done for forums: BoardReader.com. Google also had Discussion search previously. Now you can add "forum" to your Google searches.

As another commenter mentioned, append "Reddit" to your query. It was a huge help when researching my nicer espresso machine and grinder. I've also had luck once I manage to find an active forum elsewhere for a given topic like homebarista for espresso. I can then likewise modify queries with that site.

SEO has always been an arms race between the crap and what people actually want with the Joe's coffee corner caught in the middle. I remember earlier Google for instance having more keyword and snippet spam pages. I am glad they are largely gone but now reviews are loaded with purchased shills.

>here is a Facebook group that might have better perspectives, or 'Coffee Twitter', but neither of those are easy to discover through Google I'm seeing this as a growing problem, more and more content exists that is not accessible for Google and therefore not searchable

Agreed. If I could search the web of the year 2000 using the Google Search of 2000, I would prefer it to searching the web of today about half the time (specifically, when the knowledge I seek hasn't changed much since 2000.)

ConsumerSearch is the best thing I've found for this purpose specifically

https://www.consumersearch.com/

the key is money.

google wants to get paid, blog writers want to get paid, manufacturers want to make sales

the people with the lesser interest in profit (or attention $ instead of quality get buried because they dont make anybody else any money