I used to search for “Best Wired Earbuds” and “Best SciFi Films” and so forth, because I like perfection.

But these kinds of searches don’t get me the best X, they get me the X with the best marketing team. These are not the same thing.

It took me a long time, and countless affiliate-link-laden “comparisons” before I realized that the top results for “best” anything range from comparing-while-motivated (Wirecutter) to pure unrefined vegetarian snake oil.

If there’s money to be had from the people searching for something, somebody, somewhere, has probably spent money to get a particular thing in front of the eyeballs of the populace.

As usual, once we understand the system, we can find loopholes in the system.

The default thing to search for when looking for opinions about products/media/etc is “best such and such” or maybe “such and such comparison”. But humans often ask questions like, “what’s your favorite such and such?”, or “what X do you use for Y?”.

There’s a Venn diagram of what people search for, and what people SEO optimize for:

This human crescent on the right is where we can find peace, and good quality information.

Now excuse me while I go search for the second best wired earbuds, fairly decent scifi movies, and serviceable camping tents.

Perhaps we will meet again in the comments of one of those “less-well-known generalist blogs.”