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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?

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

except, how does one just magically land one of these specific pages? usually, that would be from a search result page, but that's the point of the post. after that, it's using their site's main landing page, and then browsing/searching/etc. so the main page still has to be usable, and not just the individual articles

With the big search box right on the homepage?

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

#202

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…

Examines strengths is their pages on individual items. The rest I imagine if SEO fodder. They do try to sell their guide, but their website is one of the top references for a lot of nerds trying to research ingredients in nootropics, multivitamins, and preworkouts. Take for example their page on Creatine[1]. Summarizes and links 746 references. Their chart goes over "What do people claim this does" "How much of an ef…

As some one who has been dealing with a condition where I am very concerned about Creatine.

Shear numbers is not really a good metric a paper from a renal specialist like, say the main doctor I saw for years and set up the renal unit at Lister has say a different value to some other citations/

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

#204

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 post is a good example of why SEO is such a joke. Worse than a joke, actually, because it's actively harmful.

If your search algorithm is penalizing Examine.com, that's a bug in your algorithm. It's not up to websites to jump through Google's hoops. Authors only ought to be concerned with authoring good content.

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

#205

The core problem with examine, in my opinion, is that it embraces the attitudes that: 1. A wide range of subtle personal, emotional and health problems can in principle be solved/mitigated by taking supplements and unregulated drugs. 2. Positive effects from small-group trials are akin to mild recommendations to take a supplement, rather than to attempt to reproduce the effect in a larger trial. The very premises upo…

#1 - Solved might be a bit much, but mitigation is certainly possible. The matrix shows effectiveness, and the details below the matrix quite clearly explain and summarize the potency and mechanism of the effects.

#2 - They do have ratings of how “confident” or conclusive results are, as one of the columns of the matrix.

IMHO, the site steers away most of the time from making a “yeah you should take this” recommendation. It simply lists the effects and details about those effects of the supplements/ingredients on its site. You’ll notice some herbs/supplements have nearly no effects at all or extremely mild effects.

Whatever a reader infers from the page is up to the reader. I do not believe Examine is pushy at all about supplements nor overemphasizes their effectiveness. They just present the data that they have found on supplements, good or bad, and it is up to the reader to make a determination from that.

I think your last paragraph is just uncharitable. Some supplements are effective at certain things and putting that data out there is fine. Having a single place where one can gather very detailed and collected information on individual herbs and supplements is a useful resource regardless of the effectiveness of them. Just having the information is important. I see nowhere where they claim that supplements will always fix or cure problems nor do I think that they only survive because of such “attitudes”. They’ve even put out posts that push the idea that supplements are kind of a “last resort” or are mild in comparison to other life changes

Final Note - There are plenty of supplements I’ve avoided taking (after initially being interested in them) because of the data on Examine showed they were highly ineffective, and I thank them for having that data available.

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

#206

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…

[deleted]

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

#207
What is an alternative to Google search that has better search results than DDG? If I use Bing, will it use my data to customize my searches (I don't mind this too much anymore)?

Google sucks now for technical, science, math, and philosophy searches...

I haven't vetted or researched this at all, but I get a feeling that I am just getting advertisements or google sanitized reputation rankings on Google.

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't care about the guides they sell (they have to sell something to those interested to make their living and I don't mind). I just type a substance name in the search field and get a list of good and bad things it may do with links to relevant papers. Or I type a condition name and get a list of substances which may have relevant effects.

The fact they are sincere as science makes me feel very sympathetic: they don't hesitate to mention nicotine (don't confuse it with cigarettes, it's about pure nicotine which may be delivered by many ways while cigarettes also load your lungs with tar and heavy metals) is great for weight loss and many other things. I don't really like the idea of using nicotine (because I mind physiological addiction) but I'm pleased they let me know and think for myself. They also don't hesitate to mention beneficial effect of some illegal substances.

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

#209
post #178

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…

Let me be clear - we have never bought a single link. We get direct links similar to what wikipedia does - aka direct to a supplement. For example, creatine: https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/ You will not find a more in-depth page on creatine anywhere on the net. https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-... - here's a simple example of direct links. We're also considered the authoritative s…

Disavow the bad backlinks via webmaster console, you'll notice a huge penalty for letting these bad sites link to you without disavowing them. It looks like (to Google) you're buying backlinks, and in this case ones on sites that are slammed by the latest updates. Try this on a few of the worst offenders and you'll see a noticable difference.

In your space you have the most aggressive blackhat seo actors (supplements) looking at you as the bad guy for exposing them, I wouldn't be surprised if you discover a ton of bad backlinks from domains that have a terrible reputation. Source: lost over 100,000 unique Google visits per day because of a malicious competitor putting unsolicited backlinks to our domain without our knowing and it took months before it came back.

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

#210
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except, how does one just magically land one of these specific pages? usually, that would be from a search result page, but that's the point of the post. after that, it's using their site's main landing page, and then browsing/searching/etc. so the main page still has to be usable, and not just the individual articles

With the big search box right on the homepage?

Not everyone is being hostile. I think you've been beat up on this thread, but I wasn't being aggressive to you. I quite clearly stated that you use the search page on the landing site to find stuff locally. The original post was specifically about not getting results in search engines, and that's what I was attempting to support.

For me, I've never even heard of the website in question. Why would I, as it's not a field of interest for me. However, if I were to search for it, it would be a search engine result, not a search field on some website I have never knew existed.

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