I think a much bigger point can be summarized with this sentence from the article: > Seven of the top ten results are trying to sell you something, which really makes you question the objectivity of the advice. This is true when searching for pretty much everything in Google nowadays, that's why if you're looking for any info, searching on reddit usually yields much more objective and generally better results.
Agreed, I often default to Reddit or HN for a lot of stuff although there are an increasing number of obvious adverts disguised as genuine posts (see r/hailcorporate for some examples).
More difficult to spot are marketing firms who curate a bunch of fake accounts, make them seem like "real people" by posting random content but interspersing this with subtle ads. There was an AMA recently from someone working at a firm that does this, they even gave their accounts personalities by posting in specific related subs (e.g. hiking, outdoors) in order to advertise boots. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it now, but still my point is that even though Reddit generally leads to better advice take it with a grain of salt.
Edit: Found it, wasn't an AMA but just a comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/f9rjh0/he_dressed_up_...
Although I don't see a reason not to trust this comment, the line about "we have seen great success with this method" had me wondering how they measure the impact of this strategy? It seems this would be quite time and effort intensive, therefore expensive. How do they know they can attribute sales to this since presumably they aren't providing affiliate links as that'd be too obvious?