Comment by kccqzy

This is a genuinely difficult problem to solve. The article title is "How Google is killing independent sites like ours" but then (1) I have never heard of HouseFresh and I have no reason to trust them for their reviews; (2) even if the site was highly ranked on Google, I still wouldn't necessarily trust the brand because you know SEO and ranking manipulations exist and I cannot be assured that HouseFresh isn't just a site that hired some high powered SEO consultant. It all boils down to reputation: reputation of the manufacturer and reputation of the reviewer. But humans can't realistically remember the reputation of all the manufacturers and product reviewers online, so we naturally gravitate towards well-known brands and big media publishers.