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Why has examine.com disappeared from search results?

examine.com

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

#151

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #30
ve55 wrote: post #18

>Let’s be clear: Google owes us nothing. They are a private organization, they can do whatever they want. This is a surprising thing to hear. I think given Google's influence, they owe them at least some fairness.

And, as an entity more powerful than any living thing on this planet (with the power to kill or support nearly any online business), they owe the world quite a bit of fairness: Otherwise, they can watch as their search business drops to nothing overnight. Facebook and Amazon and most B2Bs have quite a bit of lock in. But google, if they piss everyone off, we'll we're just one tab away from using something else: and o…

> And, as an entity more powerful than any living thing on this planet (with the power to kill or support nearly any online business), they owe the world quite a bit of fairness: Otherwise, they can watch as their search business drops to nothing overnight.

So are they powerful or aren't they? How can they be so powerful if they are one night away from ruin?

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

#152

Post by basch »

sixothree wrote: post #146
luckylion wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where did the idea of google neutrality come from? From Google. They've stated time and time again that it's a magic algorithm and they don't hand-pick winners and losers. And it's a good thing, too, otherwise you're just inviting corruption. Top spots are literally worth millions, and if there's an small army of people that decide who ranks where, they are an obvious target for bribes. This doesn't look that hand…

They have certainly peddled the idea that "the algorithm" is what drives page rank.

This is an extremely circular conversation. Google writes the algorithm that ranks pages.

They absolutely know, that if you search Disney, and Disney isnt the first result, they wrote it incorrectly. They also know their product has less value if it returns spam, which is why they fight SEO artists.

They do try to distance themselves from "choosing" the top result for "best construction store" or "best news site" by shouting the world algorithm, to distract the conversation. That doesnt mean they dont carefully craft the algorithm to return a relevant top result.

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

#153

Post by jjeaff »

tallanvor wrote: post #49
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.

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…

I don't have an opinion on the authenticity of this particular site. But I would add that having a real doctor endorse something means essentially nothing. And having a "real" news company like NBC, CBS, fox whatever, means just about nothing as well.

Just look at all the products that Dr Oz has on his national show and how many times he and those like him get prime news coverage from these so called news sites.

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

#154

Post by AhmedF »

tallanvor wrote: post #124
AhmedF wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me address these: 1. No one links to them. You are welcome to google. Eg here: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-... - you'll see their entire supplement section is from our site 2. That is our one, and it's more of a play on 2019 and 19. If you read the article, you'll see it's no-nosense. 3. How exactly do I prove someone is real? A quick google search shows this guy: https://twitter.c…

1. There is no good reason not to link to them, there are only bad reasons not to link to them. You're not linking to them because they're not outright endorsements, and you know it. 2. The item below that is '4 science-based “superfoods” you should consider eating'. That's pretty much just as much click-bait as the other. 3. You link to the person providing the review, preferably to a page where they actually say th…

You are literally trying to find things to complain about.

1. It's standard MO not to. We never even claimed outright endorsements...

2. Did you click on the link? We immediately say how superfoods do not exist.

As I said - just trying to fight it.

3. Anahand literally decided to quote the entire supplement section of his strength building guide (which was a section in the published newspaper) to us. If that's not an endorsement, I don't know what is.

Or you can go ahead and tweet at him.

There isn't a conspiracy around every corner.

4. Yes, and we appreciate that. We also note we do not sell supplements. We have no ads. We sell information.

Here's an example: https://a99d9b858c7df59c454c-96c6baa7fa2a34c80f17051de799bc8... - I wonder how you'll find ways to nitpick at that.

> open to feedback

This isn't feedback. This is you trying to find reasons to dismiss the website. There is no good faith here.

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

#155

Post by data_required »

tus88 wrote: post #123
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.

The problem is who is examine ? Take this random page for exmaple. https://examine.com/nutrition/lemon-water/ It's written by some guy called "Wyatt Brown". Who is he? Is he a scientist? A doctor? A university professor. Oh - I don't need to worry about that, because: > Our evidence-based analysis features 42 unique references to scientific papers. Right then. Quoting papers makes you a reliable expert and able to ma…

I think skeptics like you need to be asking a different question. That question is "what are the best informational websites?". And after that question is answered- "is Google ranking the best pages at the top of its search results?".

These are the important questions, right?

I do think there is some minor room for improvement with Examine.com, but what else out there is better? I think people who have spent a lot of time researching supplements consider Examine to be one of the best, if not the best, general website on this topic.

For individual pages, some will be better, some worse. But on average, Examine is quite excellent.

So, this is why many of us consider it tragic if Google makes it almost impossible for the public to find its pages on various supplements. If there were lots of other websites that were more credible, that would be one thing, but for the niches Examine specializes in, there's not much competition. Google is clearly failing here.

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

#156

Post by andreitp1 »

Got curious and decided to go through their SEO.

- First off, according to Ahrefs, their dofollow / nofollow ratio is a staggering 10:1, which is a huge red flag right away. A more natural ratio would be in the neighborhood of 1:2 so we are talking 20x less. But hey, maybe it's the niche that naturally attracts a ton of dofollow links - let's move on

- Looking at another of the main spam indicators, anchor text, most of them are just single keywords, like "ashwagandha", which point to the page optimized to rank for that exact generic search. The entire website is targeting single-term searches, which are notoriously hard to rank for and attract a lot of spam websites. This falls into anchor text over-optimization. They have 210 referring pages linking to their curcumin page with the exact anchor text "curcumin", same with "catechins", "creatine", "caffeine", "vitamin d" and the list goes on for all the keywords they are trying to rank for. This is not just unusual, it's literally impossible for it to just happen naturally. This has the Penguin penalty written all over it. Moving on...

- Their backlinks are for sure interesting. Among their top backlinks, we have pages such as: https://www.herbalsupplementreview.com/retro-lean-forskolin/ - with a URL rating of 46 for a website with zero traffic. In SEO terms these are called “PBN links”. Not that unusual for the health niche, but definitely not white hat. Here’s another one with the same identical metrics as the previous one (this time, it’s a homepage link), also from a dubious website with zero traffic: https://best-testosteronebooster.com/.

All of these with exact match anchor texts leading to their corresponding Examine.com pages.

- Mind you, I’m not saying that they don’t have great editorial content, and I’m not sure who helped them with their SEO, but I’m not the least bit surprised that Google might have penalized them multiple times for several reasons. There's probably more stuff but this is what I was able to find with a quick analysis.

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

#157

Post by pennaMan »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #36
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.

Also take a look at selfhacked.com. It's a treasure.

I went in with high hopes of quality resources but I was met with one of those guide selling sites. I never knew exactly what it was trying to sell me either.

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

#159

Post by zymhan »

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.

Yeah their list of "researchers" doesn't exactly inspire confidence. There would appear to be a single degree in a related field amongst all of them.

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

#160

Post by _ptgt »

andreitp1 wrote: post #156

Got curious and decided to go through their SEO. - First off, according to Ahrefs, their dofollow / nofollow ratio is a staggering 10:1, which is a huge red flag right away. A more natural ratio would be in the neighborhood of 1:2 so we are talking 20x less. But hey, maybe it's the niche that naturally attracts a ton of dofollow links - let's move on - Looking at another of the main spam indicators, anchor text, most…

This completely misses the point of a search engine. The ability to game SEO has nothing to with relevance or content quality.

If a random supplement information website's most lucrative monetization path would be to game SEO instead of doing what they're nominally supposed to do (i.e. provide quality content), the problem doesn't lie with the the content owner but rather with the search engine and the incentives it promotes.

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