Searching for product recommendations has become harder and harder over the years. I used to google or browse reddit for reviews, used them to create a shortlist of products and then actually dig deeper and compare them.

Lets say I’m in the market for a mechanical keyboard, but I don’t know much about them. I use whatever search engine to look for “best mechanical keyboard 2024”. The results are really bad, and I mean really bad. It’s more of a list of keyboards to avoid, to be honest. The problem is not just google. Bing, duckduckgo, Kagi, Startpage… all results suck. The results are filled with AI generated pages or outlets farming affiliate links. There are a couple of good suggestions in the middle of the garbage but if 9/10 websites recommend a random razer keyboard, I’m inclined to believe it’s an option worth considering.

Some of my friends say they resort to Youtube. I can agree that Youtube has amazing content creators that give amazing reviews and produce great quality content. But if you don’t know anything about the subject, how do you know which content creator is good and which content creator is just farming affiliate links?

One of the things I loved about Reddit was that I could just go to /r/whateversubject and talk to what I felt was real people discussing products they loved. I no longer use Reddit ,and Lemmy, unfortunately, doesn’t have a big enough userbase to have a good community for each type of product.

So, what’s your strategy to find out good products on subjects you know nothing about?

  • nerdschleife@lemm.eeEnglish
    11·
    5 months ago

    I’m afraid there is no quick way to get an honest recommendation. I usually resort to YouTube and spend 2-3 days watching some related content. It sorta filters itself out, there will be a creator or few that you vibe with, and you trust their choice.

    Happened to me with audio gear (I trusted crinacle, for example.)

    • Jode@midwest.socialEnglish
      5·
      5 months ago

      Weeding out the spon-con is very difficult depending on the product. I was looking at solar generators a year ago and gave up with youtube because every single reviewer was provided the product they were using for free to review.