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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?

#331

Post by Semiapies »

data_required wrote: post #329
Semiapies wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The difference being hockey is a giant sport..." Your choice of metaphor. But you're clearly not getting the point; what you imagine is "obvious" about your rightness really isn't. "Just that the claim 'there exists a better supplement site than examine.com'..." This is not a point I've seen anyone here arguing. It's definitely not a point I'm arguing. However, it's clearly a point you and the otherthe boosters of t…

"Not even not-terribly-convincing evidence, not even flimsy evidence, no evidence at all." I've listed quite a bit of things I would consider to be strong evidence in favor of Examine being a high-quality supplements site deserving of getting high ranks in Google supplement search results. So have numerous other commenters in this comments section. The Examine employee, AhmedF, has as well. So I'm curious- what would…

"I've listed quite a bit of things I would consider to be strong evidence in favor of Examine"

Charitably, maybe you've done so somewhere else on the internet. Taking a second to look at every post by you on this thread, however, the only thing you've listed are other sites that come up higher on searches. All of your posts have been demanding that other people prove wrong your flat assertions that Examine is awesome.

And I'm not feeling charitable at this point. I don't believe you're communicating in good faith. That you can dig up other woo-pushers on reddit (of course there's a nootropics subreddit...) doesn't impress me one bit. You said you were dropping it before, but I'm telling you I'm done with you now.

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

#332

Post by whalabi »

nameismypw wrote: post #204
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 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.

> It's not up to websites to jump through Google's hoops.

It shouldn't be, but it definitely is

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

#333

Post by AhmedF »

kragen wrote: post #324
AhmedF wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try reading the full article (the myths article links to an article that expounds on each myth) before accusing us of being oversimplified. As for the myths themselves - we've received over 50,000 emails from our users over the past 8 years. I'm pretty confident we can state those as myths that remain persistent in the nutrition space.

As I think I said, the article body is fairly decent despite the occasional missed caveat; my thesis was merely that the headline is false, and intentionally so. I haven't read the whole article, but as you can see from my comment above, I did read a substantial fraction of it. That's how I know the falsehoods in the headline are not mere errors. I did not accuse you of being oversimplified, and I'm sorry that wasn't…

Just wow.

> since clearly the dishonest strategy that produced that headline was chosen intentionally, but I do want to make sure that you don't misunderstand my critique.

It's people like you that put a bad name on engineers.

> The thing that is oversimplified is the (broadly incorrect) belief held by many people, the belief you are arguing against. Since it contains an important element of truth, it is dishonest to simply call it a “myth”.

It's a myth if it's preached when it does not apply to a majority.

Yikes. I wonder how fresh and clear the air is up there on your high horse.

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

#334

Post by data_required »

Semiapies wrote: post #331
data_required wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not even not-terribly-convincing evidence, not even flimsy evidence, no evidence at all." I've listed quite a bit of things I would consider to be strong evidence in favor of Examine being a high-quality supplements site deserving of getting high ranks in Google supplement search results. So have numerous other commenters in this comments section. The Examine employee, AhmedF, has as well. So I'm curious- what would…

"I've listed quite a bit of things I would consider to be strong evidence in favor of Examine" Charitably, maybe you've done so somewhere else on the internet. Taking a second to look at every post by you on this thread, however, the only thing you've listed are other sites that come up higher on searches. All of your posts have been demanding that other people prove wrong your flat assertions that Examine is awesome…

>Charitably, maybe you've done so somewhere else on the internet."

No, I mentioned things in this thread. And of course, so have many other people.

To copy and paste the simplest excerpt, and ignore a few minor additional bits:

>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."

Examine, to the best of my knowledge, has:

The most social proof

Cites the most scientific papers

Has been cited by a number of neutral and relatively authoritative media outlets

Has the best incentive structure (just making money from selling guides)

Every competitor links to fewer scientific papers for the user to do their own digging, and appears to be less neutral in what they cite.

Every other competitor is ad-funded and assaults the user with ads. Examine does not.

Many other competitors also sell their own supplements. Examine does not.

Most of the competitors are backed by powerful corporations with a history of bad behavior in multiple domains (pharma companies, etc). Examine doesn't have this issue.

I'm also amazed that you have so far discounted the personal experiences of other people, involving a great deal of research and personal experimentation. That is normally considered valuable in most domains, especially something as personal as health.

I also consider it to be valuable that the company (via its employee AhmedF at least) is willing to participate in discussions. There is some degree of visibility and accountability there. I am not aware of any other informational websites which do this.

And previously before he left Examine, the redditor silverhydra was very active and accountable (and transparent, as far as I could see), on numerous subreddits, participating in ways which often had nothing to do with his business.

Anyway :). Hopefully this discussion ends up serving you in the long run, one way or another.

And if you're done, then have a wonderful time in this magical chemical world, however that works for you ~~.

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

#335

Post by segfaultbuserr »

adrr wrote: post #88
duskwuff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare is hardly an obscure service. I'm confident that Google's search quality team is aware that Cloudflare exists, and that they have taken steps to avoid penalizing sites for using it.

https://serverguy.com/case-study/cloudflare-seo/ . It is well known in the SEO arena that your neighbors affect your SERPS. Cloudflare has an open policy on who they allow on their service where AWS, Akmai, Fastly, etc have acceptable use policies banning services like online gambling, online pharmancies, etc. Google doesn't release any information about how they rank sites but it is reasonable to assume there is a n…

Interesting. I know CloudFlare's neural policy but never thought about its effects on ranking. It explains a lot.

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

#336

Post by gamzer »

sh1mmer wrote: post #216
cyrusshepard wrote: post #6

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…

Based on this link I wouldn't trust the critical thinking of the content of this site. > We also know about Google firing James Damore and their ideological echo chamber. They are already displaying their own bias based regardless of what they think Goolge's bias is. Damore was fired because he violated California labor law. But the post continues with lines like: > Now, I’m not a conspiracy theorist ... > But it see…

> Damore was fired because he violated California labor law.

From Wikipedia[1] referring to a Guardian article:

> The company fired Damore for violation of the company's code of conduct.

Which is correct?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch...

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

#337

Post by Kaiyou »

JamesBarney wrote: post #308
Kaiyou wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's unprovable and that you should just accept that you cannot prove your claim. After all, you don't know every [X] and just this moment a new [X] could've been published, which is better than the one you claim to be the best. Just change your scope to something provable if you want your claims to be believed by sceptics. For example "[X] is the best that I know." would work.

My use of the word prove shouldn't be read as the mathematical method for establishing proofs. But the conversational use of the word prove. As in what evidence would you like to convince you of a claim. Not the rigor of a mathematical proof but to the rigor of "convince me this is more likely than the alternative." There are two competing claims "examine is the best supplement website online"(examiners) vs "there ex…

..which they don't. Burden of proof doesn't lie with them. They also never made any other claim, like you suggest. My takeaway from this whole discussion thread is that the site is sketchy. It might not be, but that's my impression as someone who hasn't heard of the site before. As I don't care for the topic the site covers either, I won't bother researching this myself and will leave it at that.

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

#338

Post by kragen »

kragen wrote: post #324
AhmedF wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try reading the full article (the myths article links to an article that expounds on each myth) before accusing us of being oversimplified. As for the myths themselves - we've received over 50,000 emails from our users over the past 8 years. I'm pretty confident we can state those as myths that remain persistent in the nutrition space.

As I think I said, the article body is fairly decent despite the occasional missed caveat; my thesis was merely that the headline is false, and intentionally so. I haven't read the whole article, but as you can see from my comment above, I did read a substantial fraction of it. That's how I know the falsehoods in the headline are not mere errors. I did not accuse you of being oversimplified, and I'm sorry that wasn't…

AhmedF has posted a truly remarkable response to this post, one I think is very relevant to assessing the integrity and trustworthiness of his web site, a response that has unfortunately been flagged into oblivion. It's quoted here in full for the benefit of those without showdead turned on:

Just wow.

> since clearly the dishonest strategy that produced that headline was chosen intentionally, but I do want to make sure that you don't misunderstand my critique.

It's people like you that put a bad name on engineers.

> The thing that is oversimplified is the (broadly incorrect) belief held by many people, the belief you are arguing against. Since it contains an important element of truth, it is dishonest to simply call it a “myth”.

It's a myth if it's preached when it does not apply to a majority.

Yikes. I wonder how fresh and clear the air is up there on your high horse.

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

#339

Post by skinnymuch »

kragen wrote: post #326
skinnymuch wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fecebutt Seriously? This is worse than people still including $ in Microsoft.

I have no idea how you could think I intended that joke seriously. Do you work for Micro$oft or something?

Are you trying to joke now about Microsoft to seem like you were joking? There’s no way your original comment makes it sound like you were not being serious. Your comment continues on naming unknown random people you follow and ends with:

> It seems that you have imprisoned yourself in a sort of filter bubble of dishonest hustlers. You might want to rethink your life decisions.

I’d think someone writing that to end their comment would be writing fecebutt [semi]-seriously. Especially when you don’t do that with any other site. And Facebook is a commonly uber hated company by certain people on the web.

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

#340

Post by theartfuldodger »

AhmedF wrote: post #26
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…

Our reputation is pretty damn solid - that's what makes this even more perplexing.

I am just noticing that you own/manage this site and are getting a lot of grief about subjective design opinions from many random developer types that do not consume content in the same manner as your audience or live in reality, so can see the frustration.

The May to present drop in positioning is catastrophic.

The content is fantastic for your space and design aligns more with journal websites than health/nutrition space. That may not be beneficial to keeping users more accustomed to image heavy,popular health space.

Contrast/Accessibility is poor - What standards were you following in a redesign?

After the redesign and as your organic positioning started plummeting - did you identify any increase in 404's and/or do visitor recordings of the traffic you do have?

Most of the titles being identified as "clickbaity" should be your OG titles and it is true that there is a weakness in on page optimization decisions and general architecture across the site. The backlink profile IS problematic! but with on page and general architecture concerns that could be improved that would be the first order of business if I was trying to restore this to former glory.

Seeing the WEB Md and drugs.com / health.com that appear in positions that your site and content are much better qualified for is concerning. You are being screwed.

Just looking at your "white kidney bean extract" article from your profile and then seeing the Livestrong article and other crap that is better positioned points out the terrible weaknesses in the last 4-5 years of Google's improved positioning for bigger brands and move away from exact matching. Livestrong hides their references in a dropdown and sticks an adblock there.

I point that out because in the end - the white hat quality guidelines are garbage and propaganda and rarely reflect reality in the enterprise/brand space .

Make the site more accessible to the average reader and those who are first researching supplements and improve your social channel. Google is not reacting logically in your positioning in comparison to the structure,positioning and quality of your competitors. But the site could be much better composed and structured.

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