Why has examine.com disappeared from search results? • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by nabnob » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

It seems like Google is de-ranking independent websites, rather than actually analyzing whether a website provides good information or not.

I'm not sure that this is happening intentionally - it's probably way more difficult to figure out a way to automate a "quality of information" rating, rather than just prioritizing websites for companies that make lots of money.

However, this has the unintended effect of narrowing the overton window for "acceptable" opinions. I've found that it's really difficult to find good results for niche topics on Google nowadays.

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

#32

Post by AhmedF » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

sambroner wrote: post #29

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.

Do you buy their guides or use it to individually research compounds? It doesn't appear to be much different than other health websites, except they sell guides, which may change the incentive structure away from marketing and towards research.

> It doesn't appear to be much different than other health websites

We go faaaaaaaaar more in-depth.

Eg collating human in-vivo research: https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/#effect-matrix

Summarizing body of research: https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/#scientific-researc...

We sell information because that keeps us on our mission - to analyze health research.

Our primary driver is a monthly subscription utilized by professionals that breaks down the latest nutrition research.

Here's a preview if you want to see how in-depth we go: https://a99d9b858c7df59c454c-96c6baa7fa2a34c80f17051de799bc8...

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

#33

Post by zentiggr » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #23

new_guy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google still has a long way to go before they solve the search problem For any search query, there's only two results: 1, what you're actually looking for 2, what Google wants you to see Unfortunately Google has 'solved' the search problem by always optimising for 2, and most times it's never what you want to see. That's not just health results either, for most anything outside of 'pop culture' Google is garbage.

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

Duckduckgo?

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

#34

Post by CryoLogic » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

If we are banning sketchy medicine sites could we ban healthline and webmd?

Those websites use scare tactics to push users through 10+ page "top 10 illnesses based on your symptoms" list which are often not even researched to the point of any accuracy and only written to drive ad revenue.

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

#35

Post by qwerty456127 » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

I never knew examine.com and now I've taken a look. I've found a lot of pieces of information which are, as far as I know, legitimate and good to know.

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

#36

Post by qwerty456127 » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

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.

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

#37

Post by gildas » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

Even though your website serves static pages, I don't think that's a good idea to hide all the contents when JavaScript is disabled... I'm surprised the "SEO analysts" did not notice that.

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

#38

Post by michaelmrose » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

new_guy wrote: post #12

pascalxus wrote: post #3

I've noticed that Google search results prioritize reputation above search matching. If you search for something, even if there's a blog out there with the exact thing your searching for, it won't show up, even in the top 100 search results, unless the site has a high enough page rank/ or some other generic metric google is looking for. This is unfortunate because there's a lot of great information out there that nev…

> Google still has a long way to go before they solve the search problem For any search query, there's only two results: 1, what you're actually looking for 2, what Google wants you to see Unfortunately Google has 'solved' the search problem by always optimising for 2, and most times it's never what you want to see. That's not just health results either, for most anything outside of 'pop culture' Google is garbage.

For any given query there are thousands of people giving that same query with slightly or largely different intent and a universe of results that suit different portions of the users better or worse.

Reducing this to a singular desired result and "what google wants you to see" is absurd. Google still provides pretty good results for most things for most people. Pretending otherwise is a waste of breath.

Statistical matching results in platforms helping con artists find victims and helping crazy people spread their poisonous crazy. If you try to avoid noxious end results you will be accused of interfering. If you don't you will be declared complicit.

Where does the appropriate middle ground lie?

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

#39

Post by spaceman_2020 » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

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.

Agreed. There is nothing remotely close in terms of depth and quality on off-mainstream supplements.

I suspect Google is really coming down on anything that might be construed as "alternative" medicine. Somehow Examine.com gets clubbed with the "just take essential oils to cure cancer" crowd

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

#40

Post by fluidcruft » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

Are there any curated directories left? It seems like they were all killed off by search, but this sort of thing underscores that curation itself actually has value.