Research
Triangulate or be sold
Marketing is not testimony. Neutral sources, real people, and a paper trail before money moves.
Everything for sale comes wrapped in content optimized to be found and believed, and the machine, searching the same web, inhales that wrapping with the facts. Before money moves, the sixth and seventh laws demand triangulation: the vendor's claim, neutral third-party testimony, and where the stakes justify it, a real human who has actually bought the thing. One source is an ad; agreement across unconnected sources is evidence.
Scale the digging to the check you'll write. A cheap purchase can ride on a review scan; a five-figure commitment deserves testimony from people with no stake in the sale, found where the marketing doesn't reach, and ideally a conversation you can have yourself. The machine's job is to find those people and surface the disagreements. Believing is still your job.
How to practice it
Route around the funnel.
Explicitly send the search past SEO and marketing pages to forums, communities, and complaints. Say so in the ask.
Weight the unconnected.
Three sources citing each other are one source. Agreement counts when the voices don't share an incentive.
Find a human at high stakes.
For big commitments, get names you could actually contact. Testimony you can question beats testimony you can only read.
Hunt the complaints.
Ask specifically for the negative reviews and failure stories. The sales case you already have.