How to search for product reviews without junk sites

Question

When using a search engine to look for reviews, tons of useless sites are returned that dont gives real product feedback.

Is there any way to search for 3rd party information on a product while

Excluding:
Fake news sites
Astroturfing sites
Places that sell the product (unless they have useful reviews)

Including:
Legitimate review sites and blogs
Sites like stack exchange
Legit discussion forums

One example is searching for reviews on a fat camp called "Camp Technique". The first 50 google results are mostly useless. Even if no useful feedback sites exists for this company, shouldnt it be easier to know there is nothing useful?

The bottom line is how to find 3rd party product information with the best signal to noise ratio and less junk sites.

Answer 1

Block the offending sites from Google search

If you have a Google account you can sign up for one either by creating a Gmail account at mail.google.com or by creating a Google account using an existing email at accounts.google.com.

Once you have an account, go to your dashboard.

There's a section called blocked sites. Enter the site's domain name (including http://) to block all results from that specific site.

It blocks on the domain level, so you may need to put in multiple entries for a site.

Ex:

http://blogs.technet.com
http://technet.microsoft.com
http://mobile.experts-exchange.com
http://experts-exchange.com

That should help you eliminate the worst offenders. Enjoy...

Note: I don't have the link to reference but I'm pretty sure that Google allows a max of 500 sites that you can block from the search results.

Answer 2

I use Chrome browser and there is a plug in that allows you to block such sites. When you see a search result that is bogus, you can click it in the Google search return page to block it. It takes some time to build the list but aver time works well.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef

How it works with screenshots http://rcayao.com/internet/google-chrome-launches-personal-blocklist/

Answer 3

The Open Directory Project is still around and is a human-vetted directory of links.

The biggest problem there is finding the right category. "Reviews" will be peppered in amongst the various product categories. For instance:

• http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Hardware/Technical_Evaluations_and_Product_Reviews/
• http://www.dmoz.org/Home/Consumer_Information/Electronics/Televisions/

But at least one or more humans has looked at every link and I know they take great pains to keep the crap out. (Not that a previously-reviewed URL hasn't ever fallen into the hands of a junk-site creator.)