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We’ve been talking this week about ways to search for information on the internet. I believe that, while not directly related to health and fitness, this is still an important topic since information is the best weapon we have in the struggle to be fit and healthy. Since the internet is one of our primary sources of information, being better at finding research on it is an invaluable skill. Over the past two posts, we covered Wikipedia and the Government. Today, I’m going to talk about some other information sources, commercial sites and blogs.

Commercial Sites, A Definition

Commercial sites are ones which try to sell you something or make money off of you in some way. That’s a pretty broad definition, and some blogs might actually fall into this category. However, because they are relatively unique, I chose to separate blog into their own category.

Examples of Commercial Sites

Here some examples of what I would define as a commercial site:

• Secret Food Cures - This is an obvious commercial site which tries to sell you a book.
• Lipitor - This site is not so obviously commerical. It’s the official site for one of the most widely used drugs on the market. It doesn’t seem to sell you anything but the reality is that it tries to sell you on Lipitor. This site is a marketing site intended to drive up the sales of Lipitor and that makes it a commercial site.
• Cooper’s Guns - I love this site and I use it extensively. Still, it’s a commercial site that tries to make money off of you by selling you products and getting you to click on advertising.
• Web MD - Another site that doesn’t seem commercial. Web MD is a great source of information on a whole variety of health related topics. However, this site is commercial and makes money through advertising.

Why Should You Care That A Site Is Commercial?

Well, because that could indicate a bias in the information on the site. Sometimes this bias is obvious. For example, the Secret Food Cures site is clearly not an objective way to see reviews about the book. The Lipitor site also has a pretty obvious bias. The site was created by Pfizer, the creator of Lipitor, in order to raise awareness of the drug because this will help increase sales.

Is this a bad thing? Does it mean the product is no good? Not at all. My mother happens to have a Lipitor prescription and it’s helped her tremendously. Also, I happen to think that there is a lot of useful information on these websites and I applaud the companies for putting them up. I would much rather have the truth with some marketing spin than I no information at all. At least with some of the truth out there on the product’s official website I can go to other sites and find out the rest of the truth, and that’s exactly the point.

Don’t be afraid of using these sites as a source of information. There is a lot of good information on them. However, it’s important to know a website’s bias when reading it. If you read about other drugs on the lipitor site, you should keep in mind that this is a Pfizer site intended to drive their sales. Are these other drugs also owned by Pfizer or by competitors? Should a doctor’s opinion on the Lipitor site count as objective?

If you read about other books on the Secret Food Cures site, you should keep in mind that this site is intended to sell books. If these are other books from the same publisher or author then the site has a motive to play them up. If they are competitor books then the site has a bias against them. Same for book reviews on the site. Can they really be objective? Also, are reviews on the Secret Food Cures site (or the Lipitor site for that matter) giving you the whole picture? After all, the owners of these sites want to drive sales. They have no incentive to show you negative information and quite a bit of incentive to not show it.

So Should You Use These Commercial Sites?

Absolutely, I use them all the time. Just keep in mind the bias I just reviewed. These commercial sites want to sell you something. Any information you read on these sites should be viewed with that in mind. Essentially, read everything on these sites as a sales pitch and not as unbiased information. A sales pitch can still contain useful facts but it can also lie through omission or mislead you into believing something that’s not quite true. Plus sales pitches rarely present you with the whole picture.

What About Advertising Driven Sites?

The Lipitor and Secret Food Cures sites were obvious sales pitches, but what about more subtle commercial sites like Web MD? These sites aren’t trying to sell you anything. Instead, they’re to drive up page views and get more visitors to their site. This allows them to sell more advertising at higher rates and make more money. That means that they too have a bias, but it’s a much more subtle one than the sales pitch sites.

Whereas a sales pitch site tries to sell you something, an advertising driven site tries to get you to visit the site by offering interesting information. Notice that I did not say useful or factual information. Articles do not have to be truthful, factual or even useful in order to be interesting. Heck, half the crap I read on a daily basis on the internet is neither truthful nor factual and it’s definitely not useful.

Now that said, these sites do have a vested interest in being both useful and truthful. Useful articles are usually more interesting and a site that gets a reputations for delivering factually incorrect will quickly lose its audience. So yes, these sites do have incentive to not lie. However, does this mean their articles are completely unbiased? Not at all.

The Advertising Bias

Any site driven by advertising is driven by the need to increase viewer, readers, clicks or however else you measure their popularity. This means that advertising driven sites are specifically driven to show you articles and content that will drive viewership. This means they may not provide you with the complete picture. Take a look at the following headlines:

1. Five ways to lose weight
2. Eating too many tomatoes will kill you
3. Drinking beer will make you healthy
4. A five year cohort study of the effect of Omega 3 acids on omentum area fat accumulation in middle aged males and the corresponding risk of a cardiac event

By the way, all of these are made up headlines.

Which ones are you likely to read? Well, most people would read number 1 and 3. Why? Because those matter to them. People want to lose weight and they drink beer. So articles about those topics will be interesting to them. In fact, articles that validate our current behavior are really popular because we like being told we’re doing the right thing. So for many people, article 3 is a must read. Headline 2 is somewhat interesting but come on, who here eats so many tomatoes that they’re really worried about eating too many of them? Article 4 sounds so boring that the heading itself probably turned most people away. Readers also love controversy so any article which generates controversy is great. And finally, fear sells, so any article which causes fear will also be a sure seller.

So now, if you’re the owner of a site that makes money by getting readers, which headline are you going to show? Headline 1 is the first choice. It validates a lot of behavior so people will want to read it plus it’s controversial so that will get even more readers. Headline 1 is interesting but you might want to change it to “five ways to lose weight and lower your diabetes risk” because that also plays up the fear factor. You may display headline 2 because it does generate some fear and controversy but that’s unlikely. Unfortunately, you’ll almost never display headline 4 because, although it might be amazingly informative, it also sounds boring and boring doesn’t sell advertisement. All of this is a bit exaggerated, but I think you get the picture. Advertising driven sites will not deliberately mislead you, but they may choose stories that don’t tell the whole picture because they want to sell more advertising.

Are These Companies Evil For Putting Marketing Spin On The Truth?

Not at all. These companies, authors and whoever else puts up a site for their product is in the business of making money. To not put some marketing spin out there would be a disservice to their shareholders. I just think we need to be aware of this spin and keep it in mind when we do research on these commercial sites.
Bloggers!

And that brings us to tomorrow’s topic, bloggers.

###

Just like government sites, commercial sites can be a very useful source of information. Just keep in mind that they’re in this for money. Once you realize that, you should be able to make better use of their information.

UPDATE

I added the “Are These Companies Evil…” section at the bottom of the post due to an email I just received. The email claims that I am somehow antibusiness. I find this ironic because I got no such email of protest for my last post when I claimed government sites had their own bias. I would have thought people would have been more upset at that than they were at this. Anyway, I added a section to clarify. By the way, I’m a marketing person myself.

Series Navigation

«How To Research On the Internet - Part 4, BlogsHow To Research On the Internet - Part 2, The Government»

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