Live data from Hacker News

Why has examine.com disappeared from search results?

examine.com

231–240 of 363 posts

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

#231
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah you did a very cursory, cosmetic look at the site and judged it by its subject matter and web design choices. If you would've bothered to look under the hood, you would see that they reference tons of scientific sources and provide a level of transparency and knowledge-base to the sports supplement industry that is unrivaled. To be clear, There is no other site nearly as good as Examine for this subject matter.

I checked out examine.com and it's not as bad as the previous comment had me expecting. But it still looks like a boilerplate front page that I would pretty much immediately back out of and keep looking. I'm not a fan of "don't judge a book by its cover." The purpose of the cover (other than to keep garlic mayo off the pages) is to be judged. It's at the peril of the website to have such good content diminished by po…

I’ve never gone to examine.com directly. I always get there by a google search of whatever supplement or nutrient I am researching (vitamin D examine) and it’s one of the the only places that give peer reviewed and objective and honest info about them. Their “Human Effect Matrix” tables are invaluable.

https://examine.com/supplements/vitamin-d/

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

#232
post #62

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…

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.

My way of looking at it has always been there is no such thing as organic search results (other than that the organisation in question did not have a hand in choosing to put it there). The aim is, presumably, to return quality sites, which always involves a subjective judgement - there is no intrinsic or natural ordering of a set of sites (other people could choose to rank them differently). Whether it's writing an algorithm that results in those sites being at the top (which _must_ be rewritten if returns certain sites otherwise it will be gamed), a more direct choice, or a combination of the two, there doesn't seem to be much difference. The algorithm serves to scale Google's subjective opinion, and they will always boot out sites they don't think are of sufficient quality - it enables them to return sites that they may not have hand-judged, but I've always assumed it is trying to approximate what would be returned if they _did_ check every site.

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

#233
post #141
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enjoy how you ask questions but never click on anything because it must fraud. You can click to the about page to see who he is. And who edits the work. And how the editorial process is. "Wyatt Brown" is clickable. The 42 citations are done directly after each claim, and the study is linked. Most sites just have a bibliography at the end. You are just cruising here to pick a fight. > Fraud Lordy, I'm afraid to even…

Hey, I understand how frustrating is to have people criticize your work unfairly, especially when they seem to be just picking a fight. Believe me, I get it. Still, it breaks HN's guidelines to cross into this sort of attack back, no matter how provocative another comment may be. We can't allow that because it leads into a predictable downward spiral that makes this place worse for everyone. (I'm a moderator here btw, in case this comment doesn't make sense otherwise.)

Would you mind taking a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and posting in the intended spirit? As a bonus, it will make your own comments stronger and get a more receptive hearing from the community here, the overwhelming majority of whom are fair-minded even when the comments are not.

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

#234

The folks at Examine.com should also analyze what inbound links they have scattered on the web. An easy way to sink your competition is to place their links on shady websites. It's common SEO practice.

I thought google got rid of the disavow feature and no longer penalize on the quality of inbound links?

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

#235
post #123
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…

Would you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? When people go into the internet warrior thing, it cheapens this place, regardless of how right your underlying points may be. It's also against the site guidelines, which ask for thoughtful, substantive comments, as well as several other things which your post here has broken.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean he’s right. The home page is fine too it has a big clear search box. I think he’s just pointing out there’s really no “there” there. The examine site is legit, information packed, easy to navigate and parse, and it’s primary use case is landing via search results so it’s best pages are the ones you see most. Sidebar: examine is one of two sites I regular use the google site filter for: “site:examine.com (suppl…

Except everyone is missing the point that you can't find it in a search engine. Has anyone RTFA? That's the entire point of the article. Using a website's local search ability is irrelevant to people that have never heard of the website to visit. The search engine is where people go to find something they don't know where to go for the information they seek. Hell, parental units still go to google first (as in browse…

The point then is if you search for creatine, you end up on that page not, not the homepage.

And so if you end up on https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/ it pretty much blows away all other pages on creatine.

So at the end of the day, you still end up on useful information.

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

#237
post #233
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoy how you ask questions but never click on anything because it must fraud. You can click to the about page to see who he is. And who edits the work. And how the editorial process is. "Wyatt Brown" is clickable. The 42 citations are done directly after each claim, and the study is linked. Most sites just have a bibliography at the end. You are just cruising here to pick a fight. > Fraud Lordy, I'm afraid to even…

Hey, I understand how frustrating is to have people criticize your work unfairly, especially when they seem to be just picking a fight. Believe me, I get it. Still, it breaks HN's guidelines to cross into this sort of attack back, no matter how provocative another comment may be. We can't allow that because it leads into a predictable downward spiral that makes this place worse for everyone. (I'm a moderator here btw…

Fair enough.

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

#238
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, CBC, multiple Wikipedia page I would take one reputable medical journal over all of them. I mean the MSM covers all sorts of trivial things all the time.

Why would a medical journal cite Examine? Examine just compiles and analyzes research, they don't generate it. Has any medical journal ever cited any supplements website? What would there be to cite??

We could be cited in a letter, but very unlikely as they would reference the primary research itself.

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

#239

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.

> What is an alternative to Google search that has better search results than DDG

What's wrong with DDG results? I have found them to be pretty good, the results don't seem to be as sensitive to current events and viral trends but I can always find what I'm looking for. I do have to sometimes hit the "more results" button, but I definitely find myself on the 2nd or 3rd page of google particularly on technical or scientific topics.

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

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

> renal doctor.

Our HEM specifically mentions kidney function and links to studies that looked at creatine and kidney function.

Post reply on HN