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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?

#61

Post by domnomnom »

johnnyfaehell wrote: post #55
tallanvor wrote: post #49

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…

>3. Reviews by "professionals" that I can't easily verify. "Mike Hart, MD" is an example. Who is he? How do I know he's a real person? If he is a real person and a real doctor, how do I know he actually recommended this site? One of the reviews by professionals is John Berardi of Precision Nutrition if you're into nutritional research and can't verify him. Then, in my opinion, this site is not for you. You'll need so…

Yeah that's really all there is to it. I'll admit it's a bit difficult with the UX at first, but there's a lot of info there.

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

#62

Post by zuuow »

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…

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.

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

#63

Post by Endy »

puranjay wrote: post #42
Endy wrote: post #21

There's a very cynical part of me that is considering whether this might be a planned action by Google to cycle the FP, and try to get the "disappeared" sites to pay Google for pay-per-click advertising. I wish that was completely unbelievable, but Google has proven to be entirely focused on profit when it comes to monetizing search; and of course intentionally starving sites from getting hits/leads/conversions seems…

But it has only impacted sites in the health niche. There's a lot of really bad advice and information being circulated in this niche. The antivax insanity didn't just spring out of nothingness. I run a site that covers musical equipment (I'm an amateur musician) and my rankings have been stable for over a year with almost zero work.

Again, the cynical response is, "for now". When they get past this stage where they're doing the most obvious thing that's probably more good than harmful, how long before they say that they're working with musical industry leaders, so they'll emphasize on what the labels say is good equipment.

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

#64

Post by 1123581321 »

jgmmo wrote: post #59
tallanvor wrote: post #49

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…

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.

That doesn’t matter. If a cursory visit doesn’t inspire confidence, users will back out and that will look like low engagement/low value to Google’s ranking analysis.

It’s actually a more helpful analysis for this topic to do a cursory, cosmetic look.

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

#65

Post by ianhawes »

duskwuff wrote: post #25
adrr wrote: post #19

I'd move off Cloudflare. Cloudflare hosts a bunch of sites that are penalized by google. Google is known to penalized sites in bad neighborhoods. Spend the money and get dedicated IPs and don't share certs. Examine.com is sharing a cert with an online gambling site(reengame.com).

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.

I thought that as well. Totally anecdotal, but after switching off of CloudFlare and onto a dedicated IP, our rankings increased within 2 weeks. We track algorithm changes through SEMRush, who did not report an algo change around the time the rankings increased. In addition, we actually saw an increase in page load times because the assets were no longer being served via CDN.

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

#67

Post by helij »

scottlocklin wrote: post #47
Scoundreller wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m very happy to hear about mercola being disappearing. It always rank so highly for so many terms, with complete nutjob advice.

When I google for astaxanthin, the suggestion in the original post, Mercola ranks higher than Examine. Which is bloody tragic, as examine gives legit information. Someone at Google doesn't like them.

Nah, it's not that someone at Google doesn't like them. Mercola is much more 'SEO'ed' than Examine.

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

#68

Post by DidISayTooMuch »

bad_user wrote: post #27

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.

Are you talking about negative SEO attacks?

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

#69

Post by yifanl »

zuuow wrote: post #62
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…

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.

I mean, Google always was, even in the PageRank days. Even if you can perfectly recreate the numbers as to why so and so site is ranked higher in your system, its still your system choosing to rank so and so site higher.

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

#70

Post by nwienert »

1123581321 wrote: post #64
jgmmo wrote: 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.

That doesn’t matter. If a cursory visit doesn’t inspire confidence, users will back out and that will look like low engagement/low value to Google’s ranking analysis. It’s actually a more helpful analysis for this topic to do a cursory, cosmetic look.

Except that examine is an excellent site, and their cursory look was actually more of a "motivated reasoning look". If you land directly on an examine page for a supplement, it's quite clear the site is really well done.

I'm a designer as well, not just a developer, and it's layout is really well done: clean, straightforward, clearly presented, and the data is easy to find. They link to studies and always err on the side of caution in their descriptions.

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