Perspective B
Initial Contributor: Chad Vice
Original Post Date: March 31, 2011
Updating Considerations: Searching for Quality Advice / Tips
When seeking advice tips – no matter the source, consider the source carefully. For example, let’s say that you are seeking fitness tips. The normal person, and most persons would simply search “fitness tips” at a search engine such as Bing** or Google**. Well, those search engines work only 1 or 2 possible ways:
- The highest bidder per keywords; or
- SEO (Search Engine Optimized).
Of course, common sense tells us that # 1 would likely bring us to a biased advice page. But in actuality, # 2 is usually not much better (if better). To get a listing from a keyword search on the front 1st page of such type of search engines, requires either much labor, money, or in some cases – both.
So assuming that you could somehow know that the website owner or management did not spend any money getting the keyword search to land a listing on the 1st page, you may want to ask yourself: “Why would this website owner or webmaster or management spend much time and labor adjusting their page to be found under such keywords?” Of course, there are some instances wherein purely by happenstance and by no effort of the webmaster, a page could get a top ranking search result from a keyword or phrase. But such instances are becoming increasingly rare.
Remember, though it may sound redundant it is necessary to reiterate, consider the source – always; no matter how small or large an entity. Furthermore, the term “reputable” means little when it comes to quality advice. For example, a large reputable company or organization may not give you any false, misleading or “bad” advice…. Conversely, they may not give you any top quality or secluded advice either. A large and “reputable” entity knows that it may become a target for lawsuits, vilification, and political control. Therefore, they tend to (as they probably should) be more mindful of being politically correct and cautious about anyone’s toes they may be stepping on.
So let’s get back to searching for “fitness tips.” Health and/or Fitness magazines will almost always give free fitness advice tips on their websites. And as such, may or may not be a good source. While such magazines may not sell fitness products, their funding sources (sponsors/advertisers) do. Will this translate into their advice tips suggesting a certain exercise product? Probably not. But, it should by all means be considered. Perhaps another source may be an entity that is “somewhat” related to the fitness industry but has no immediate or direct funding from the fitness industry itself. For this, I considered Kellogg’s Special K** cereal. Sure enough, I found some of what seems to be unbiased and substantially versed fitness tip; However, I also noticed a “nutrition tips” page directly linked. Not to say such nutrition tips would be either good or bad, but such source is obviously directly connected to the nutrition industry. The source is therefore considered, and would not be my first choice to seek such information.