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

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

#81

Post by privateSFacct » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

I took a look at the page and have to agree with another poster - the landing page at least looks like a lot of trash websites.

They say they are recommended by:

The New York Times Washington Post BBC Guardian Forbes Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

But do not link to any of these sites showing the endorsement (the the icon of Men's Health does turn color when hovered over). That's classic bad behavior scammers use.

Ask yourself, why would be the BBC of all places be endorsing this site? Oddly googling for examine.com and BBC get's a link to "The food supplement that ruined my liver" which makes no mention of examine.com

I then followed the links to the scientifically proven "super-food" - Spirulina. This links to a paper and I picked one random name and found they were a lecturer at a university in Romania - where they also received their degree. Ok...

The whole scientifically proven "superfoods" with dramatic health benefits invented by "NASA" is already so scam buzzword filled how does google not push this down?

Now google is supposed to be promoting this type of health info over more standard health info? I'm all for folks exploring the edges of things, but... at least a quick read of the page doesn't inspire huge confidence in this landing page as an authoritative source for health info.

I may also have found the MD who recommends examine.com . His website is here: https://mikehartmd.com/ no issue with cannabis, but again... lifestyle / single topic medicine vs a normal internal medicine dr.

Edited: Interesting to see the quick downvoting for what is a relatively content oriented comment.

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

#82

Post by core-questions » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 7:04 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.

Never mind the bad search results, consider the narrative-shaping power they wield.

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

#83

Post by ceejayoz » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

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.

> They were already doing it with the carousel (google "american inventors")

Maybe.

There's a chance you're seeing an unintentional side-effect of inclusion-oriented school projects getting hordes of people to Google stuff like "African American inventors".

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

#84

Post by macinjosh » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

Use duck duck go, yippy, gibiru, qwant, or any other of the many alternatives. Google's search is probably the most over rated product of our time when you look at the full cost of being a Google user. I haven't used Google search for more than 5 years and I am not missing anything.

Google search keeps the rest of the Google machine afloat. If consumers showed their distaste for Google's problems by using alternative search products they would get their act together faster than the average query time.

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

#85

Post by thfuran » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

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.

>. 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.

But that has no bearing on whether the site is actually presenting comprehensive or accurate information.

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

#86

Post by jackpirate » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

AhmedF wrote: post #80

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…

Let me address these: 1. No one links to them. You are welcome to google. Eg here: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-... - you'll see their entire supplement section is from our site 2. That is our one, and it's more of a play on 2019 and 19. If you read the article, you'll see it's no-nosense. 3. How exactly do I prove someone is real? A quick google search shows this guy: https://twitter.c…

3. How exactly do I prove someone is real?

A quick google search shows this guy: https://twitter.com/drmikehart - you are welcome to tweet at him. Or at the others.

Why don't you just provide a link and save the user from having to google? I'd trust a link to a medical practice looking business website much more than to a twitter account.

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

#87

Post by macinjosh » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

la_barba wrote: post #72

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…

I've wondered a bit about that when Google blocks companies from emailing their customers for free because its "spam", but readily accepts money to show them ads.

You can stop wondering. It's real.

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

#88

Post by adrr » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

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.

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 network/IP reputation score similar to what email providers use to combat spam.

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

#89

Post by nokcha » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 7:11 PM UTC

maxander wrote: post #45

I wonder if the issue is liability- people suffering from various ailments are liable to Google their symptoms in hopes of finding an at-home cure instead of going to a doctor[0], and if this turns out badly they could conceivably turn around and try to sue Google for providing harmful medical advice[1]. De-ranking sites that provide medical advice, which aren't whitelisted well-known sites like Mayo Clinic or WebMD,…

Not in the US. Section 230 gives Google civil immunity (for any information provided by another information content provider), and even without it, they'd be protected by the First Amendment.

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

#90

Post by andrekandre » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 7:12 PM UTC

nesadi wrote: post #5

This is tragic. Examine.com is probably the best site I know with a focus on determining the science behind any food or supplement one might be interested in. They should be at the top of every Google search.

isn’t this one of the classic reasons monopolies are bad?

[edit] please let me clarify the reason i wrote the above is because examine.com basically has no recourse but to appeal to google since they are basically a monopoly in search results, which is one of the reasons people consider a monopoly to be bad... they can’t just “pay more to bing” and get all their lost traffic back can they?