Online Shopping – The Verge

Who reviews the reviewers?

House Fresh, a blog focused on air quality, is exactly the kind of resource you might need when shopping for an air purifier — but they’re becoming increasingly difficult to find.

In a post titled “How Google Is Killing Independent Sites Like Ours,” Managing Editor Gisele Navarro explains how larger publishing companies like BuzzFeed, Better homes and gardens, AND Rolling stone outperform an independent site in Google search results:

These digital giants shouldn’t be able to use product recommendations like a personal piggy bank and simply pull Google updates based on “the right signals,” an old domain, or an echo of a reputable brand that no longer exists.

As a team that has spent the last few years testing and reviewing air purifiers, it’s sad to see our independent site being overtaken by large, widely read publications that didn’t even bother to check if a company was bankrupt before convincing millions of readers to buy their products.