Hello fellow lemmings,

I was a wiz at google in the early 2000s. I would find obscure forums for every interest and usually get some pretty good info. My research skills haven’t aged well, and I’d like to get a bit more with it.

I use:

  • Rtings, for TVs and monitors
  • Consumer reports, for <500
  • Sites like scamreport where people rant about shitty companies not living up to their promises
  • glassdoor, to see what a company’s employees think and how they are treated

How do you research your purchases when there is so much AI slop out there and google doesn’t really work right anymore. Duck duck go and bing are marginally better. Are there trusted impartial review sites?

  • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
    201·
    2 months ago

    Reading comments on Lemmy / Reddit mostly. I’m not looking for the top voted answer but rather the points that people mention and considering what’s important to me. If possible I also check with friends that might have purchased something similar

    Overtime I’ll use Reddit less and less, given that they’re now actively telling businesses to take advantage of that effect. Old comments are still ok, but new comments are all suspect

    https://www.business.reddit.com/

    What a mess.

    • njordomir@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      2 months ago

      That makes sense. In a recommendation thread, PIA or Nord would be the highest voted VPN, but if you read the comments and see your fellow privacy nerds talking about Mullvad, you might choose that because privacy is important to you. I also find popularity does not always corelate with quality.

  • lemmyng@lemmy.caEnglish
    8·
    2 months ago

    Glassdoor is not reliable. Companies can pay to suppress negative comments.

    Are there trusted impartial review sites?

    They exist, but are very few - their articles get stolen by unscrupulous copycats, or the AI slop buries them in noise. It’s like panning for gold, but instead of a bubbling creek it’s sewage runoff. I hardly ever find trustworthy results on the first page any more, you got to go several pages deep until you stop seeing the “Top N <search term> you absolutely need to buy!” results.

    • njordomir@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      2 months ago

      I know Glassdoor has issues. I didn’t know they allowed suppression of comments. I imagine a former employer of mine would have gladly paid $$$ to fix their 1.7* rating rather than actually pay us more so we could actually give them a higher rating. Instead they had new hires rate the place highly before they got dumped into the live operation. Still one of the lower ranked companies on Glassdoor.

      I found a few similar sites that seem more “pure”, but they really only work for the tech industry.

      I agree with you about the torrent of sewage. Its hard to find good data. Honestly, a 1yr pre-enshittification reddit dataset searched with Ctrl+F is likely better at answering many questions than today’s google search.

  • gigachad@sh.itjust.works
    8·
    2 months ago

    I used to search with site:reddit.com, but the quality of research results got much worse within the last years. For big investments like let’s say a new washing machine I use a more or less independent website that tests different devices, it costs about 5€ to see the results.

    All in all I need much, much more time to do research. Often I simply do not buy anything in the end. It is very frustrating.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
      3·
      2 months ago

      Ya and Amazon reviews are so untrustworthy now too. Sellers can ramp up ratings on products and swap out the product and keep the reviews.

    • njordomir@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      2 months ago

      This tip worked well in '22-'23 before reddit hit peak enshittification. Agreed on the time. Researching what you are getting is not as easy as it once was.

  • Libb
    87·
    2 months ago

    Reddit, and hopefully Lemmy will get there too ;)

    Also, I quite like using Kagi search engine (paid) for its neat features. Things like

    • No Ads and no SEO to ruin the results.
    • Blocking/Lowering/Raising certain domains from the search results. So, I never have to even see the name of those turd websites that specialise in SEO-optimized or AI-vomited non-content.
    • Small Web, which only search small websites
    • Lenses (to focus search on certain type of content/websites)
    • Bangs and a few other more usual stuff one may also find in other search engines.
    • They also have optional AI-stuff, if that is your thing.

    I’ve been using Kagi for almost a full year (it is supposed to renew in a couple days) and I’ve been loving every instant using it. Like really.

    That said, it’s not cheap. Here in Europe (I live in France), it’s 130€ a year (tax-included) for their second-best plan, and I have not yet decided to renew because of that cost. So, the last couple weeks I’ve been forcing myself to use the search engines I used before Kagi to see how well it went (startpage & qwant, mainly). And, yeah, I already miss Kagi a lot ;)

    • Akasazh@feddit.nl
      62·
      2 months ago

      Your comment is almost exclusively about kagi and not about an answer to ops question.

      • Libb
        53·
        2 months ago

        The OP asked:

        How to You Research Vet Products on the Post AI internet?

        That is was what I answered to. That said, I agree my answer is not ‘Vet’ specific. So, maybe I was wrong in explaining why I decided to use a paid search engine in order to get usable, quick, not AI-infested and as topic specific as I want them to be results? I don’t think so, but anyone is welcome to disagree.

        Also, not being native English speaker I considered the OP ‘Vet Products’ was referring to ‘veterinany products’ (something I could ignore in my suggestion as being a tad too specific), was I wrong?

        That being said, I sincerely want to thank you for taking the time to tell me your point of view as, since I posted my comment earlier I was a bit perplexed by the few downvotes it received. Now, I get it or maybe I still don’t, but at the very least I have some clue why it’s happening :)

        Edit: rephrased the first sentence in a more correct English. Hopefully.

        • njordomir@lemmy.worldOP
          2·
          2 months ago

          Sorry for being unclear about the way I used “vet” in the title. I can see how that was misleading a little bit. I wanted to hear honest opinions, so if you really like Kagi, I’m happy to hear about it. It’s hard enough to find info right now that we may soon is the opportunity to be picky about our information.

          • Libb
            1·
            2 months ago

            Sorry for being unclear about the way I used “vet” in the title. I can see how that was misleading a little bit.

            Don’t be. It happens all the time and that’s fine. That said, thx a lot for taking the time. Also note that I’m still not sure it was what you meant. Was it? ;)

            so if you really like Kagi, I’m happy to hear about it.

            Please, do consider my entire comment not just a part of it. What I said is that I do indeed like it a lot and also that I find it expensive and I’m not sure I will renew when time comes. Time which happens to be today and, yep, I’m as unsure today.

            It’s hard enough to find info right now that we may soon is the opportunity to be picky about our information.

            People habit of naysaying or belittling opinions they don’t agree with makes it even harder to find any trustful info but that’s how things work nowadays, that and a seemingly constant drive to try to hurt others through our words.

            Regarding Kagi, they have a free test plan, it’s limited but it will give you an idea if it’s worth anything to you when you want to search for some info you can trust… and it won’t matter what I can say, or what any other of the persons speaking in this discussion I apparently started by daring say I liked to use a paid-for service to do my searches. Decide by yourself, that’s all you need to get a trustworthy opinion :)

      • Susaga@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        22·
        2 months ago

        If someone spends money to use a search engine, they will find a way to force that search engine into any conversation they can. It’s like how if you spend thousands on a bottle of wine, you’ll show that bottle off whenever you have guests over.

    • njordomir@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      2 months ago

      I’ve seen this in various threads on Lemmy. I’m sure Kagi has some cool features, but I don’t know how any search engine can overcome the walled garden effect that is plaguing the internet today. The data just isn’t out there to be curated anymore, it’s locked behind the hedges of the different sites.

      I think search might have been killed. I expect in my lifetime, we’ll have to sign all our communications using encryption to keep algorithms from impersonating us online to trick people into buying stuff. I’m kind if surprised there isn’t an organized resistance collecting legit reviews.

      • Libb
        2·
        2 months ago

        I’ve seen this in various threads on Lemmy. I’m sure Kagi has some cool features, but I don’t know how any search engine can overcome the walled garden effect that is plaguing the internet today. The data just isn’t out there to be curated anymore, it’s locked behind the hedges of the different sites.

        I think search might have been killed.

        I 'm pretty sure you’re 100% right and that’s where we’re heading. It has already started but we’re not there, yet.

        I’m convinced too that in a not too distant future I’ll be witnessing (and I’m 50+ year-old) almost all content will be put behind pretty and comfy walls but walls nonetheless, with doors and locks on them we wont own the keys (btw, that’s the reason why I completely quit posting on reddit, as I explained here I refuse them putting any walls around the only valuable stuff they have ever owned, our content). But we’re not there, yet. I mean, the Web is still not that walled garden and, so far, Kagi has also been working more than fine (they even try promoting an alternative, for example with their ‘small web’ feature).

        How it is working now is the reason why I’m (was paying? As I’ve yet to decide to renew, in less than two days). I pay for how fine kagi is working today, not how it will be working in the future. The day they stop being relevant, I’ll stop using them (like I quit using Google search many years ago). Will I be sad? No idea, what I know is that I’ll be a lot more sad for what the Web will have finally turned into.

        Imho, as of now, Kagi is simply too small for the big sites or for the other engines to be worth worrying with them.

        At this time there are less than 35k paying members/users (they publish their stats but seeing how some people can be jerk when one is mentioning their appreciation for a paid product I think it’s safer to not share a link. It should be easy to find, though). Considering their size, I imagine it’s not like they represent a threat to anyone’s business. They’re just a tiny, tiny alternative, and a paying one at that! Something that will not help them grow fast, if at all.