Product Recommendations:
I think that in most cases, rather than asking for a product, people should ask for a solution. Instead of asking for the best cleaner to get rid of cat urine, the question should be how to clean cat urine. That way, people can suggest the products they like organically, with instructions to use the product, rather than just having a poll of people's favorite brands. In some cases, it also could benefit better where someone could be prompted to share home remedies/recipes.
Pet Recommendations:
I've already shared my opinion of pet-recommendation questions in this question but in short, I think that pet recommendation questions are off-topic.
To summarize:
These questions are too broad:
There are only two factors that limit what animals can be owned as pets.
- The animal ownership laws in the region where the person looking for a pet lives.
- The motivation of the person wanting to own an animal.
There is nothing that can be done with our format that will allow us to give accurate recommendations for specific animals, and recommending species is a gross disservice to everyone involved.
These questions are too opinionated:
One important signal that shows when a question is opinionated is when the answers are subjective to the answer's experience. In order to build content that lasts, it's important to stick to objective questions and answers. Ones that can be verified by multiple people.
At best, people will suggest only the animals that they own, or have experience with. Which means the suggestions will only be limited to a select few animals depending on who answers their question.
At worst, people suggest animals they don't have experience with and it lowers the quality of the answers on the site driving potential users away.
These questions are too localized:
In the end there is only one person that can select the correct answer in pet-recommendation questions, and that is the person asking for the recommendation. We can suggest any animal we want, but the actual choice is up to them.
This goes against everything else on the site, probably even the network. The entire point of having the voting system is so that users on the site can sort questions to have the best answer on the top. If we have no way of objective selecting a correct answer, then no one coming to the question through a google search will be able to make any use from the answers.
In the end, asking for pet-recommendations is not much different than asking what programming language to use, or what kind of cake to bake, it doesn't really matter to anyone but the person asking the question.