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Re:The Google Squeeze by shostack on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @12:30AM (#21521383)
What's fascinating to me is how Reddit is arguably at the tail end of "the pack" of major publishers. They struggle to monetize, yet possess one of the few remaining bastions of decent quality reviews depending on what you're looking for.

Arguably this is because there is still "full" organic reach possible, and the users govern the subreddits. If there were to be a major throttling of organic reach such that the only way to get prominent visibility on Reddit was to pay based on reach, or mods lost the ability to control and curate their communities, I wouldn't be surprised to see Reddit drop in quality and user base.

Re:The Google Squeeze by sireat on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @02:05AM (#21521741)
Anecdotally one gets better quality reviews using `foobar review site:reddit.com` than any other method.

You can weed out the fake reviews on reddit better than say on amazon because of other users.

Just use some common sense and if you see an echo chamber subreddit then take the review with some salt.

Re:The Google Squeeze by piva00 on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @05:11AM (#21522577)
I've been doing this for years now, it works even better for niche products (or not massively produced). The last example was the Smarthalo, a friend of mine asked me what I thought about it as I'm into biking, I had seen some ads and their Kickstarter campaign but didn't give much thought, the only way I could find reliable user reviews was by appending "site:reddit.com" after my Google Search as the other user reviews would be from Amazon or other e-commerce websites that I really don't trust.
Re:The Google Squeeze by ralfd on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @05:58AM (#21522816)
Absolutely!

Yesterday I wanted to buy some inear headphones on Amazon and the user experience on the site itself is abysmal with countless no name China wares and suspect reviews.

A search on fitness related subreddits what people actually use and how (water damage through sweating seems common) was much more useful.

Re:The Google Squeeze by maest on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @03:22AM (#21522035)
I wouldn't say Reddit is all organic nowadays. Plenty of accounts gaming the website.
Re:The Google Squeeze by shostack on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @02:49PM (#21528647)
My point is they don't (or can't with the current setup) play games by restricting how many people see your post unless you pay up ala some other well-known sites.
Re:The Google Squeeze by maest on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @02:51PM (#21528672)
My bad - I saw 'organic reach' and thought you meant advertisers organically reaching customers.

But you meant users reaching content.

Re:The Google Squeeze by muddi900 on Monday November 18, 2019 @12:26AM (#21562117)
Odd, I have only encountered clear SEO spam from smaller companies. It is very well disguised but just looking at a users history reveals that the review was spam.