The Guardian brings shopping site The Filter across the pond

One year ago, The Guardian launched The Filter, a product recommendation site in the vein of sites like The New York Times’ Wirecutter and New York Magazine’s Strategist. Back then, The Filter was just for U.K. readers; now, The Guardian is bringing it to the United States.

The Filter, like the rest of The Guardian, will be paywall-free and will rely on affiliate revenue. This has worked well for The Filter’s U.K. offering — The Guardian told Digiday that The Filter received 62 million views and 8 million clicks through to retailers in its first year, leading to a “significant volume in sales,” though they didn’t provide details on those numbers. Much of that traffic apparently comes from The Guardian’s own homepage, which means The Filter might be a bit insulated from the SEO changes that are roiling the internet these days.

The Filter will launch with three main verticals: home, travel gear, and wellness, with expert reviews backed by rigorous testing. But while the site will, ultimately, make money off readers buying things, the goal — at least outwardly — seems to be to help readers buy “fewer, better things.” In a post announcing its launch, the Filter U.S. team wrote that they’ll be taking sustainability and ethics into account (insert question here about whether there’s such a thing as ethical consumption under capitalism, etc. etc.). “We believe that unfettered consumerism will have a detrimental effect on our planet, and seek to recommend products proven to last,” they continue. “We may also note possible risks linked to a product, such as non-stick coatings in cookware, and offer alternatives.”

It’s an interesting time to launch a publication like The Filter. Aside from Wirecutter and The Strategist, The Filter will likely be fending off competition from tech companies like Google and OpenAI; Google’s AI search already litters the top half of a search screen for any product with dozens of affiliate links of its own, and ChatGPT head Nick Turley recently told The Verge he envisions ChatGPT earning revenue through recommendations of its own (which would no doubt be based at least in part on scraping recommendations from sites like The Filter).

Nick Mokey, editor of The Filter U.S., doesn’t seem too worried about that. “People want personal recommendations,” he told Digiday. While they might be fine making small purchases off a Google AI overview, he continued, “I don’t think most people will be satisfied with a two-paragraph summary before spending $500 on a kitchen appliance…The human touch is not going away.”