HouseFresh

Why it’s harder than ever to find reliable product recommendations online, and what you can do about it ??

This April I'm going to be running the Manchester marathon in aid of Asthma + Lung UK. Asthma is one of the most prevalent conditions in the UK, 1 in 5 of us will suffer from a related lung condition in our lifetime, and yet is still not taken seriously with regards to its severity. As well as this, the work done by my friends over at HouseFresh has opened my eyes to the importance of air pollution and its relationship to asthma. And they've been kind enough to donate a few training t-shirts, too! I'm hoping to raise ￡500. Link to donate is here (https://lnkd.in/eHxQvGUN) and in the comments. Please give what you can! I've just gone over 100km in the January training block with a run in the Brighton sunshine yesterday, looking forward to getting stuck into more next month ??♂?

It’s harder than ever to find reliable product recommendations online. A few weeks ago, I had the chance to share some practical tips with The Washington Post to help consumers avoid being duped into buying bad products. This is a matter close to my heart as I spend the vast majority of my days at HouseFresh testing and recommending air purifiers, working alongside Danny Ashton. We both know first-hand how bad most recommendations ranking highly in Google search results are, and have been quite vocal about this. I hope this article helps us spread the word even further. The piece is now live, so I’ll share a gift link to the article in the comments below ??

We are on our way to Google HQ to spend a day discussing the current state of Google Search with other independent web publishers and Google engineers. We hope we will come out of the meeting with actionable next steps towards a better way forward for the open web. Wish us luck.

Big publishing websites are siphoning off traffic from independent websites. Google's first page is now a hub for affiliate pages with low-quality content. This post by HouseFresh encapsulates the current digital marketing landscape for businesses that are over reliant on search for traffic and revenue. https://lnkd.in/gT2BKDEd #seo #contentmarketing #searchengine #digitalmarketing #content

Google created a monster through its reliance on domain & brand authority. When you reward old, established sites publishing mediocre drek over unique, independent creators' new, more authentic work, you get this sad situation. Forbes, Money, Real Simple, Better Homes & Gardens, Spruce, Food & Wine, even LinkedIn itself (esp. with Pulse, ugh ??) aren't publishing the best stuff. They're just using the "swarm technique" described in HouseFresh's latest piece to dominate millions of keyword rankings. TBH I think this, not AI or TikTok alternatives, is the biggest long-term threat to Google. We can all feel the domination of SERPs by these mediocre brands-turned-content farms, and it's making the Google search process in sector after sector feel less useful.

Last fall, Futurism reported that Sports Illustrated published product reviews by fake authors with AI-generated profiles. Now, they've uncovered how the company behind that content has generated articles for dozens of news sites — from USA Today to the LA Times. This is the type of content that drowned the thorough reviews and real product recommendations we publish at HouseFresh. Hopefully, reports like this?will help us show the world why we say that much of the content ranking at the top of Google right now shouldn't be there. Read more: https://lnkd.in/djDx-A55 #Google #Media #AI

We are super excited to test the performance of the Nukit Tempest by Naomi Wu ?? We received it this morning and Danny Ashton couldn’t wait to build it. The Nukit is an open source air purifier that uses PC fans to ensure high clean air delivery rate with very low noise. Stay tuned for the unboxing and performance test videos ?? #NukitTempest #DIYairpurifier #HouseFresh

Linus and Luke from Linus Media Group discussed our exposé on big media sites recommending bad products in a bid to replace ad revenue with affiliate commissions. Jump to the section of the podcast where they discussed their impressions as internet users and their experience as product reviewers: https://lnkd.in/eG5egkR8 #productreviews #linustechtips #googlesearch #enshittification

A new report from HouseFresh examines the nation’s real estate markets that were found to be most vulnerable to climate change—more specifically, fire, flood, wind, or heat damage.?