Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why has examine.com disappeared from search results?

examine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 363 posts

Re: Why has examine.com disappeared from search results?

#101

Post by OJFord »

sachdevap wrote: post #94
tallanvor wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I've come across the site before, but at first glance it doesn't look reputable at all. --I realize that looks aren't everything, but I see the following that look like red flags to me: 1. They show logs for news sources such as The New York Times, BBC, etc., but they don't actually link to those sites, let alone to articles that actually mention this site. 2. I see click-bait titles like "The top 19 nu…

> 2. I see click-bait titles like "The top 19 nutrition myths of 2019". It's 2019. EVERYONE does this to get attention from people. > 3. Reviews by "professionals" that I can't easily verify. "Mike Hart, MD" is an example. Who is he? How do I know he's a real person? If he is a real person and a real doctor, how do I know he actually recommended this site? They actually cite sources. You really need to look at partic…

> > 2. I see click-bait titles like "The top 19 nutrition myths of 2019".

> It's 2019. EVERYONE does this to get attention from people.

Nobody that successfully gets my attention does that.

Re: Why has examine.com disappeared from search results?

#102

Post by joe_the_user »

zentiggr wrote: post #33
thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like we need a new search engine, a better search engine. One that returns the things you're actually searching for.

Duckduckgo?

I just checked duckduckgo and examine doesn't appear to be censored there. I then switched my default search engine.

I hope that this means duckduckgo is indeed not going to censoring. I'd like keep websites for adult who can judge for themselves alive.

Re: Why has examine.com disappeared from search results?

#103

Post by vxNsr »

ceejayoz wrote: post #83
zuuow wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... Google is openly editorialising their results? They were already doing it with the carousel (google "american inventors") but if they are doing it with what seemingly is the list of organic results this is very, very troubling.

> They were already doing it with the carousel (google "american inventors") Maybe. There's a chance you're seeing an unintentional side-effect of inclusion-oriented school projects getting hordes of people to Google stuff like "African American inventors".

Try googling "black inventors" and then "white inventors" it appears they are directly editorializing.

Re: Why has examine.com disappeared from search results?

#105

Post by ceejayoz »

vxNsr wrote: post #103
ceejayoz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were already doing it with the carousel (google "american inventors") Maybe. There's a chance you're seeing an unintentional side-effect of inclusion-oriented school projects getting hordes of people to Google stuff like "African American inventors".

Try googling "black inventors" and then "white inventors" it appears they are directly editorializing.

That potentially shows the same phenomenon - kids given a Black History Month assignment to write a paper on a black inventor - and it's fairly clear there's some sort of automated threshold at work.

As evidence, I really doubt this difference is editorial-based:

https://www.google.com/search?q=purple+musicians (shows the carousel)

https://www.google.com/search?q=purple+inventors (no carousel)

Re: Why has examine.com disappeared from search results?

#106

Post by enlyth »

OJFord wrote: post #101
sachdevap wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. I see click-bait titles like "The top 19 nutrition myths of 2019". It's 2019. EVERYONE does this to get attention from people. > 3. Reviews by "professionals" that I can't easily verify. "Mike Hart, MD" is an example. Who is he? How do I know he's a real person? If he is a real person and a real doctor, how do I know he actually recommended this site? They actually cite sources. You really need to look at partic…

> > 2. I see click-bait titles like "The top 19 nutrition myths of 2019". > It's 2019. EVERYONE does this to get attention from people. Nobody that successfully gets my attention does that.

The front page of BBC is filled with clickbait headlines every day

Re: Why has examine.com disappeared from search results?

#107

Post by 80386 »

darawk wrote: post #20

I was going to say that "examine.com is one of the best sites on the internet for information about supplements/nutrition". But it's not. It's the best site on the internet for that sort of thing. It's great that Google is attempting to fix the issue of bullshit nutrition sites ranking highly, but I sincerely hope someone at Google sees this and does something to help out Examine, which is a tremendous resource.

> It's great that Google is attempting to fix the issue of bullshit nutrition sites ranking highly

When I search Google for "astaxanthin", I get a HuffPost article as the fifth result on the first page.

Re: Why has examine.com disappeared from search results?

#108

Post by Scoundreller »

usaphp wrote: post #58
Scoundreller wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I used to run a very tiny phone number directory, where I provided big company’s actual phone numbers, unlike their websites that provided everything but. For a while, I would rank on the first page, and provided clear and quick results. Then around 2012, they really dropped, and your search result just became 10 different pages on the domain of the corporation.

Well it kind of makes sense. I would not trust some third party website with a phone number of my bank for example. You don’t want to call someone if that number is not listed on the official website

Then you end up in a no-man’s land where the official website makes it hard for you to find their support number too.

Though to your point, one Canadian ISP changed its support number. And my website even recommended people print it out in case their internet goes out and they can’t look up phone numbers...

Re: Why has examine.com disappeared from search results?

#109

Post by tr3ndyBEAR »

nwienert wrote: post #70
1123581321 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t matter. If a cursory visit doesn’t inspire confidence, users will back out and that will look like low engagement/low value to Google’s ranking analysis. It’s actually a more helpful analysis for this topic to do a cursory, cosmetic look.

Except that examine is an excellent site, and their cursory look was actually more of a "motivated reasoning look". If you land directly on an examine page for a supplement, it's quite clear the site is really well done. I'm a designer as well, not just a developer, and it's layout is really well done: clean, straightforward, clearly presented, and the data is easy to find. They link to studies and always err on the…

They also recently went through a redesign and I think it's really clean. But yeah, idk about their homepage and stuff, but go on any of their pages for a specific supplement and every sentence is thoroughly cited. It's also a great resource for finding relevant studies if you wanna do your own research.

Re: Why has examine.com disappeared from search results?

#110

Post by qwerty456127 »

cyrusshepard wrote: post #6

For additional context, Google has "disappeared" 100s of alt-health sites - some bad, but some very good. The site Self Hacked was one, and detailed it here: https://selfhacked.com/blog/google-censorship-of-health-webs... Some, like Mercola, peddle highly-controversial, near anti-vax content. But on the other end of the spectrum, Examine.com should be the gold standard. Quality Raters should use it as an example of a…

Besides SelfHacked and Examine, what are some other good sites that have been censored?
Post reply on HN