Why has examine.com disappeared from search results?

> Google has an almost immeasurably large influence on the public commons and society.

I disagree. Google does not have much in the way of meaningful influence over the public commons and any influence they do have is offered up voluntarily by the public to google. If google wants to curate specific content that is their prerogative and if people don't like it they should boycott and protest against google. Every single google product is non-essential unlike e.g. corporations that dominate food, real-estate, and medicine. If the people determine that access to an internet index is a human right, the government should create its own index instead of picking a particular corporation and effectively nationalizing its product.

> In my view anything that has such a large influence needs to be regulated to ensure the public interest and good.

I agree that tech companies need regulations, but those regulations should apply to all companies instead of being applied to companies that we personally disagree with.

I don't disagree with the company -- I don't even know what that means. I think that no entity should have that much unchecked power and influence over society. Information, and the control of access to information, is power. In many ways it's one of the most important resources in existence. Google is in such a unique situation, much like 'ma Bell was back when it was broken up into the baby bells. As such, it will require unique regulatory action; though probably I would deal with through blanket legislation rather than a limited and targeted regulatory approach. As such, all indexes would be subject to the same rules.

It's not a novel idea that corporations must serve the public good. We have long past decided that this is something government facilitates. See, public utilities, common carrier status for telecoms, and hundreds of other industries.

We won't agree. Like I said, this is an ideological position.

This is very simple, though. There appear to be two people competing claims here.

Me and other satisfied readers of a free website, claiming Examine is a great resource, and usually the best single resource.

And many of us have provided evidence- that they cite massive amounts of scientific papers, that they've been cited by the NYTimes and other media news outlets, the fact the post got hundreds of upvotes is its own evidence, the fact they don't sell supplements or make money from advertising, etc.

You (or other skeptics), saying it's not a great resource (while ignoring all evidence already provided).

And you are also providing zero evidence, despite the supporters of Examine providing a ton of evidence for why it is a high-quality and credible site.

By being skeptical, you are claiming something, right?

The claim you are making is much easier to back up. You literally just have to find ONE source which is usually better. We already did a lot of work, why can't you do some work?

And yet, you refuse to do that. You're being much more lazy than me. I've already tried things partly due to Examine's research, and I was satisfied with the results. And I paid nothing for those great benefits.

And then I shared my experience, for free, because I appreciate the help I was given.

All you have to do is find a single objectively superior source than Examine. (Or 10, if you want to actually address the original post).

I am not asking you to do "my work", which I have already done, I am asking you to do work to back up YOUR assertion.

Hell, I even provided you with some likely candidates to start your research, if you actually care to not be lazy.

> I don't disagree with the company -- I don't even know what that means

It means to personally disagree with a company's behavior or ideology.

> I think that no entity should have that much unchecked power and influence over society

They don't have unchecked power and influence over society. Why do you think they do?

> Information, and the control of access to information, is power

That's a vague platitude, additionally, picking and choosing what google is allowed to curate does absolutely nothing to mitigate the amount of information they collect or control. Now, if you were proposing a law that prohibits companies from gathering certain types of information or storing it for more than a certain amount of time, or mandating that companies must allow you to delete or otherwise manage data collected about you, that would make sense (and I would personally agree with the sentiment behind such laws)

> Google is in such a unique situation, much like 'ma Bell was back when it was broken up into the baby bells

I am not necessarily opposed to breaking up google (i.e. alphabet), but that doesn't really hamper their ability to collect information about you, nor does it dampen google's search dominance, in fact, it is likely to amplify their dominance since it would force google.com to focus primarily on the core-search product rather than on cross-cutting concerns across all of alphabet.

> We won't agree. Like I said, this is an ideological position.

Fine. Not sure what I'm supposed to take from that statement.

As someone who casually came across Examine.com a while back, I left quickly simply because the website didn't seem credible. As others have pointed out here, the website's design (while looks nice) does not send all the right signals that this is a well-established research website. I know it's not good to judge a book by its cover, but online, the cover is everything.

I know this sounds anal, but if they were to simply clean up the site a bit like by removing all the excessive icons and cleaning up their button text, they would come across as more credible.

Perhaps if they came across as more credible, people wouldn't be leaving and google wouldn't get the wrong signals.

Simple and quick list of changes that would make their site feel more trustworthy:

1. Remove most if not all of the icons 2. Do away with borders on non-white background - basically just make background white. 3. Tone down your button text. "I'm ready to learn" sounds really shitty and obnoxious. 4. Stop screaming with all caps buttons 5. Consider a different logo entirely. 6. Consider different color palette entirely 7. Do away with old button styles 8. Restore normal font size to sources - right now it makes me feel like you are hiding them. 9. List author credentials on every content page 10. Do away with ugly callout styles and excessive icon usage 11. Re-work all the weird "Scientific Research on ___" tabs so that they do not require so much clicking to find basic info.

Overall, the site is just over-designed. I realize everything I say would make the site look more WebMD-like, but that's what triggers trust when it comes to medical info sites.

Lastly, I fully expect to be downvoted for this as design is not something that's very respected around these corners of the web, but I felt it was important to make that point since this is a perfect example of a website that while looks great, does the opposite of creating a trustworthy browsing experience.