A pioneering "review of the reviews" aggregator that ranked products by reading other experts' tests rather than running its own, and now appears effectively shuttered as its parent's Ask.com sister site has closed.
What it's really for A meta-aggregator (now closed) that graded and summarized existing expert and user reviews.
What our grade covers The grade on this page is about its 'best reviewed' picks distilled from other reviews, not everything the site does.
Medium Scoring Confidence Mostly sourced, but a detail or two still needs a primary source, so the grade could shift slightly.
- Operating since
- 1999 (27 years) · source
- What it costs you
- Free to read The reviews are free to read.
- How they make money
- A meta-aggregator that scored products by reading, weighting, and summarizing existing expert and user reviews from sources like Consumer Reports, magazines, and Amazon, monetized through affiliate "where to buy" links.
- What they do
- It combed through professional and user reviews across the web, graded each source by credibility, expertise, and relevance, and distilled them into "best reviewed" product picks and buying guides.
- What to watch for
- By its own description it did no hands-on product testing of its own, so its rankings were only as good as the third-party reviews it summarized, and it earned affiliate commissions on the purchases it recommended.
- Composite score
- 2.90 / 5.00 → grade B-
How the grade was reached
Does the site take money from the very entities it ranks? Pay-for-placement, vendor-funded data, and affiliate commissions all pull this down. The less the ranking can be bought, the higher the score.
What is the ranking actually built on? Hands-on testing scores highest, then verified first-hand reviews, then opinion or popularity surveys and self-reported figures, then pay-to-rank, which scores lowest.
Is the methodology published, specific, and reproducible? Can a reader see how a given rank was reached, or is it a black box?
Are commercial relationships, sponsorships, and affiliate arrangements disclosed clearly and near the rankings themselves, rather than buried?
How hard is it to game? Controls against fake reviews, solicited reviews, and vendor gaming raise this; an open box anyone can stuff lowers it.
Evidence
- ConsumerSearch derives its recommendations by reviewing, analyzing, and summarizing all the existing product reviews, rather than engaging in any direct product testing or evaluation; co-founded by Derek Drew and Carl Hamann in 1999 and officially launched May 19, 2000, it was purchased by About.com in May 2007. Source: ConsumerSearch (Wikipedia mirror, en-academic) →
- ConsumerSearch combs through ratings from print magazines, international reviewers, and professional testing organizations such as Consumer Reports, as well as hundreds of user ratings on sites like Amazon and Epinions, then analyzes these reviews based on credibility, expertise and relevance to reduce the time it takes to make an intelligent purchase. Source: Clark County Public Library — Reviews and Ratings guide →
- The ConsumerSearch homepage now redirects to an Ask.com farewell notice stating Ask.com officially closed on May 1, 2026, indicating the property is effectively defunct under its parent (the former About/Dotdash/People Inc. group). Source: ConsumerSearch.com homepage (A Farewell to Ask.com) →