Gijs Verheijke

 

Issues with google search for products

2 March 2022

I was searching for new bed linen today and remembered how bad Google has gotten for this type of consumer research:

  1. I don't want to get sent to a neverending loop of affiliate marketing spam, just to see a couple of products
  2. Most of these blogs don't cover the topic I want anyway, which is "what are brands that make high quality bed linen that fits European sizes"
  3. Google's shopping tab is broken beyond repair, no matter what they say. So there's no use checking it.

The whole combination of search and online bed linen is complicated:

  1. Bed sizes vary wildly per region. A king size bed in the US is different from a King size bed in Europe.
  2. Mattress thickness plays a role. (European mattresses tend to be thinner than US ones).
  3. Most online bed linen is sold from the US, but most of the US population has US format bed sizes.
  4. But many Europeans have custom, or European bed sizes (with different duvet traditions). So they fit neither the US standard nor their own country standard.
  5. Online stores almost never tell you which countries' bed sizes they serve.

When I found our duvet brand (SOJAO), I didn't do this through search. It was through a friend who mentioned he loved this D2C brand from Singapore. I found their website via Google directly, but not through search or discovery.

I'm still waiting for social media platforms to get better at "friend-recommendation" tooling. I know Instagram tries, but it doesn't really connect me with products that my friends specifically are recommending.

My best Google hack continues to be putting "site:reddit.com" at the end of my searches. As a way to bypass affiliate marketing and other low quality content, to get to real opinions.

Anyone have a good hack for finding more relevant results?

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