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Comment by IgorPartola

As a consumer I am totally fine paying for things. But I hate being interrupted with ads for irrelevant shit I don’t want or need. Google and every other online advertiser is hilariously bad at guessing what I might be shopping for at the moment. Amazon comes close by remembering what products I looked at last. But Google is worse than dogshit when it comes to this.

I’ll give you a typical example where Google could be great but falls so short: I deliver to it on a silver platter a search query for a specific product “MRCOOL DIY 4th Gen 12k btu”. This is a very specific ductless mini split heat pump that retails for about $1750. I was looking to see if anyone had a cheaper price. Well Google Shopping mostly showed me results for either the 3rd Gen or a different BTU rating, in an apparent attempt to not show too few results. No a 36k btu unit isn’t a substitute. No, just the air handler isn’t a substitute. I have my credit card out and ready to go, buy Google is too busy showing me ads for window units!

You know where I found my answer? Eventually I gave up on Google and went to the manufacturer’s website, looked through the list of authorized dealers and saw that Costco was on the list. I then looked there directly and found the unit at $300 cheaper than elsewhere. Bad search engine, no cookie!

parent IgorPartola 4 years ago

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