I think this comment is mistaken. The blog post is simplistic and doesn't cover the case you're describing of multiple good products for different consumers, but it's ultimately still right. Ads are not a good solution for this use case either because they don't exist to actually match consumers to good products, they exist to selfishly drive sales to their brand owners. That goal is parasitic to the service of product recommendation. Similarly with Amazon itself, their goal is to maximize some combination of sales revenue and ad revenue.

The solution to this is just what you described, a 3rd-party recommendation service. I don't think there's any reason Amazon should be able to make better recommendations than I can with a minute or two of research. Advertising giants only have a marketing profile on people, I think it's fairly limited in terms of how helpful it can be.

The problem with the "top 10" sites you mention is ironically that they are almost all actually advertisement sites, not genuine product recommendation sites. This means they get paid to place products and are essentially corrupt. I would guess the ecosystem is so universally horrible is because SEO costs money and requires them to aggressively monetize to exist. I've read that the Wirecutter is one of the only genuine sites and I find that it usually works fairly well at the price bracket they choose and for certain kinds of home goods.