Comment by ethbr0
3 years ago
I (about half-honestly) blame Amazon, and more recently Google Maps.
All reviewers are not created equal.
In the early days before mass-SEO, you at least got the benefit of most reviewers being authentic, even if inept.
Now, we have the worst of all possible words: mass fake reviews + a public trained to expect only amateur-level reviews.
It doesn’t help that google has largely de-prioritized smaller sites.
For better or for worse, my reviews about banks and their products have now been replaced by 10 links in a row to different sub-pages of the bank’s domain.
At least it used to make sure a blog article and a forum would appear on most search term’s top10.
I get it for my “XYZ Bank’s Phone Number - talk to a human now” pages. They probably shouldn’t have out-ranked the bank’s own official site, but the bank’s own website was much less user friendly than my own despite the abuse potential.