Remix.run Logo
tallytarik 2 days ago

G2, Sourceforge (yes, that one), and Gartner’s Capterra/GetApp/SoftwareAdvice all have the same business plan: charge vendors $x,xxx+ per month to outrank other vendors in their made up categories.

Of course, you can technically list for free.

But look! For the low low price of $x,xxx per month, now you can show one of 40 tailor-made award icons on your site!

Or, unlock the privilege of showing “user reviews” from our site on your site! (of course if you had managed to get reviews independently, you’re not allowed to use the widget without paying)

Don’t have reviews? Ah, I forgot to mention. The $x,xxx plan also comes with “review generation” — we’ll pay users to write reviews for you!

Oh, and on an unrelated note, the $x,xxx plan just also happens to unlock dofollow links across each of those 40 made up categories, which all rank highly in google. And the $xx,xxx plan means that - user ratings aside - you can end up at the top of those categories.

It’s hard to describe it other than the author says: a grift. Seeing those logos on other companies sites are now a huge turn off to me personally, and I haven’t yet capitulated for my own SaaS, but I suspect this isn’t the feeling of the execs they seek to target. Or maybe it is, and it’s just the price of doing business.

abirch 2 days ago | parent [-]

I think this is the at same model that the NYTimes book reviews back had in the 1990s. Pay us money and we'll say nice things.

It'll be interesting to see how AI Agents approach things. My prediction is that more of our media is going to be controlled by our AI Agent's Algorithm instead of Google, Twitter, and Facebook's algorithm or some distant editors who decided what went on the front page of the newspaper.