There are, however, two types of sites benefiting from referrals that I have a complete lack of trust in. The first is tech news sites (Gizmodo, for example) that feature posts about sales on specific items. Sometimes these are actually good deals on good products, but often a little research indicates that the price and/or the product are nothing special and they're just trying to drum up referral bucks. Often times these sites still post actual reviews worthy of reading, but I definitely will not depend solely on that one review.

The category of sites that I wish I could just erase from the internet is the SEO blogs that seem to exist for just about anything these days. Often times these purport to be review sites, but a little digging reveals they're likely just people regurgitating information from manufacturers and making recommendations for products they've never actually used. For popular product categories, I often have to sort through pages of search results to find a page that's not just some low-effort SEO blog. I shudder to think about how many consumers may be misled by these sites and make poor choices because of them.