Do you really think this is vetted? There's no way this guy has actually tested all of these things. He's just reading Amazon reviews instead of you.

Exactly, he's reading Amazon reviews instead of me, that's the whole point. (If you don't want to call that "vetting", fine by me I guess)

No, specifically I think he does not do any manual vetting or reviewing. I think he essentially gets a ton of products in a given category, then takes the average review and price and runs some kind of formula to find a value sweet spot. I've done this same thing dozens of times myself in excel and it's kind of cool to see someone do it systemically.

Combine this with something like wirecutter that does vetted reviews (but probably looks at fewer products as a result) and it seems like a good complement.

The manual vetting that I do revolves around discarding real-yet-unhelpful reviews (which aren't easy to spot algorithmically). E.g.

Off-Label Usage - Customers rate a portable jump starter 5-stars, even though they have only used the product to charge their smartphones, not to jump start a vehicle.

Self Validation - Customers rate a carbon monoxide detector 5-stars because they feel a sense of relief and validation that their purchase will protect their families.

Customer Service Uprating - A 1-star rating is later updated to 4- or 5-stars because the manufacturer offers the customer a replacement product (and suggests altering the review).

Misunderstanding - A customer leaves a negative review because he or she didn't read the product description carefully and is consequently disappointed with the product.

Ideology or Spite - A positive review is paired with a negative rating because the customer disagrees with the business practices of the manufacturer (e.g. It's a great product, but Widget Corp. is a POLLUTER!).

Wrong Model - A review for one variation of a product is lumped in with reviews of another version of the product. (Hard drive failure rates can differ by 900% depending on the size of the drive.)

Wrong Product - A product page is repurposed by a seller, thereby mixing the reviews of one product with a completely different one. E.g. A page about a protective phone case contains reviews about a wireless charger.

Shipping Issues - Customers leave negative reviews because their packages arrived late or damaged in a way that reflects negatively on the shipping carrier, not the manufacturer.

Joke Reviews - A customer uses his or her review as a platform for comedy. Sexual wellness products, or those that are gender-based, seem to be disproportionately affected.

Empathy or Pity - A customer has a bad experience with a product, yet he or she leaves a positive rating (typically, 4-stars) because "someone" might like the product.

I think the key difference between this and the Wirecutter is less that the Wirecutter looks at fewer products (although that might be true) and more that the Wirecutter model is for an expert to form their own judgements about what is important whereas this guy focuses purely on deriving a consensus from the user reviews without using any priors or first party research.

That's exactly right.

I've never claimed to test products, but I do consider my selections to be highly-vetted: https://www.goodcheapandfast.com/about - There is around 2,000 hours of research behind them. The trick (from a UX standpoint) is deciding how much work to show when the spirit of the site is to be dead simple.

And then actively qualifying any recommendation by adding “cheap.”

You guys are missing the point. Sure, he has a vision and he doesn't want to abandon it but in order to compete in ranking for super high competitive terms his site has to be on par with the other top ranking sites. Google doesn't know what his intent is and as the site is right now, the algo compares what he has to what others have. He has great backlinks, but really sub par content when you look at who he is competing against. He does not seem like an authority on any of this stuff.

If the concept is to attract the 'satisficers' which by the way, i love that word and that book also, there needs to be some other kind of optimization on the pages. Going after 'best of' for everything looks spammy. And that spammyness is amplified by the lack of content when compared to the other sites ranking for the terms he's optimizing for.

There are other ways to attack this problem. Instead of having it be best of everything - it really should be a statistics site for popular products. Add in some kind of ranking system or some kind of kayak-like search and BOOM - new unique concept that provides real value to people. As the site is right now, its gimmicky, thin on content and is NOT going to rank in today's SERPs the way it is now. Sorry.