Macenstein

If you’re a glass-half-empty kind of person (like me), odds are you are annoyed by all the optimistic results traditional search engines provide. For instance, type “iPod” into Google, and you’ll be presented with Apple’s iPod site, iLounge, iPod Hacks, etc. All pretty rosy, pro-iPod sites. But, what if you were looking to buy an iPod for the first time, and wanted to know the types of potential problems you might encounter? You’d have to scroll pretty far down in the results to find out. That’s where ifsuck.com comes in. Just type in your search query, and ifsuck will tell you if it sucks, saving you time and money.

Above: Does the Zune suck? Yeah, apparently it does.

Actually, what ifsucks seems to do is just run your search term through Google with the term “sucks” added to it. While this may seem like a stupid idea that may itself sort of suck, it’s actually kind of useful. Often when I am researching for a purchase, I want to see what people’s problems are with it more than I want to hear about what they like best. I usually already know the good points about it, that’s why I am considering it. For instance, if I’m looking for a new HDTV, and I know I am leaning towards a Sharp Aquos, I don’t really want to read a lot of glowing reviews telling me how great the picture is. I’m more interested in the people who were so upset by their purchase that they bothered writing about it. For example, while from the description of the Aquos on the Sharp product page I might already know how many and what type of inputs are on the back, I may not know that the placement of those connectors sucks. With ifsuck, I know immediately the worst things about an Aquos, and can then decide if they matter to me.

Something I thought was interesting, if you search ifsuck for the word “iPod”, you get 133,000 results. If you search for “Zune”, only 76,400 “sucky” results are returned. However, if you factor in that over 180 million more people have bought an iPod than a Zune, the fact that the Zune has just over half as many negative posts is quite telling.

The fun thing is, ifsuck is fairly new, so you can easily influence the top “sucks” results. Just type in anything (except Macenstein) and it will probably make the top 10.