Whether searching for best dog scissors or hot sauces, I get a front page full of SEO’ed fake top 10 lists with affiliate links.
I can include site: to search a specific reviewer or Reddit, but that basically turns google into a local search. Has the time of google for product reviews now past? Is there a replacement that downranks these terrible SEO’ed fake recommendations?
Affiliate marketing and SEO optimization have pretty much destroyed the usefulness of searching for product reviews.
I usually just add "reddit" to the end of whatever I'm searching. It's the only way to read what real, mostly-unincentivized people think about something.
I wish Google had a way to "downvote" results. Sure they would have to mitigate artificial manipulation, but what they have currently doesn't work well.