
Why has examine.com disappeared from search results? - cyrusshepard
https://examine.com/nutrition/google-update-july-2019/
======
darawk
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.

~~~
tallanvor
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 nutrition myths of 2019".

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?

4\. The attempts to get me to spend money feels slimy. --This is pretty
subjective, I know, but that's how it comes off to me.

So I can understand how this site wouldn't rank high in a search engine. I
would need to do a lot of research to decide whether or not to trust it, let
alone whether or not they have information that's actually worth spending
money on.

~~~
AhmedF
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-...](https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-build-
muscle-strength/) \- 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.com/drmikehart](https://twitter.com/drmikehart) \- you are
welcome to tweet at him. Or at the others.

4\. We analyze information and sell that for revenue. We are a business -
alas, we have no tree that grows money in our backyard.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Re 3. providing a bio and referencing their other work is a good start; as is
linking to trusted sources, LinkedIn, the person's Uni or business resumé
page, a "verified" Twitter account might work; if they're of note they may
have a Wikipedia page ...

~~~
AhmedF
Good idea!

Here's Kamal's thorough bio page:
[https://examine.com/user/kamalpatel/](https://examine.com/user/kamalpatel/)

Here's Kamal verified on twitter:
[https://twitter.com/zenkamal](https://twitter.com/zenkamal)

Here's him on Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamal_Patel_(researcher)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamal_Patel_\(researcher\))

Here's Examine.com on Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examine.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examine.com)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Just FYI I was addressing the question. You're being a bit salty. You should
have asked "what else other than x, y , z" if you already had a good answer.

Aside: the Creatine page links to
[https://examine.com/about/#researchers](https://examine.com/about/#researchers)
which is below where Kamal Patel appears on that page, so I scanned down the
page and he wasn't mentioned (he's at the top, but I had to search to find
him).

That page is long, and linking to generic prose about researchers from a named
link made me think there was no information on that person.

That could be a one-off error, of course.

~~~
tptacek
He's being salty elsewhere because HN commenters are being rude to him. Here,
he's just directly addressing the parent comment, without providing any color
at all.

------
andreitp1
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 of them
are just single keywords, like "ashwagandha", which point to the page
optimized to rank for that exact generic search. The entire website is
targeting single-term searches, which are notoriously hard to rank for and
attract a lot of spam websites. This falls into anchor text over-optimization.
They have 210 referring pages linking to their curcumin page with the exact
anchor text "curcumin", same with "catechins", "creatine", "caffeine",
"vitamin d" and the list goes on for all the keywords they are trying to rank
for. This is not just unusual, it's literally impossible for it to just happen
naturally. This has the Penguin penalty written all over it. Moving on...

\- Their backlinks are for sure interesting. Among their top backlinks, we
have pages such as: [https://www.herbalsupplementreview.com/retro-lean-
forskolin/](https://www.herbalsupplementreview.com/retro-lean-forskolin/) \-
with a URL rating of 46 for a website with zero traffic. In SEO terms these
are called “PBN links”. Not that unusual for the health niche, but definitely
not white hat. Here’s another one with the same identical metrics as the
previous one (this time, it’s a homepage link), also from a dubious website
with zero traffic: [https://best-testosteronebooster.com/](https://best-
testosteronebooster.com/).

All of these with exact match anchor texts leading to their corresponding
Examine.com pages.

\- Mind you, I’m not saying that they don’t have great editorial content, and
I’m not sure who helped them with their SEO, but I’m not the least bit
surprised that Google might have penalized them multiple times for several
reasons. There's probably more stuff but this is what I was able to find with
a quick analysis.

~~~
chibg10
This completely misses the point of a search engine. The ability to game SEO
has nothing to with relevance or content quality.

If a random supplement information website's most lucrative monetization path
would be to game SEO instead of doing what they're nominally supposed to do
(i.e. provide quality content), the problem doesn't lie with the the content
owner but rather with the search engine and the incentives it promotes.

~~~
habitue
I think the point is that they apparently have spent a bunch of time on SEO,
and it's backfiring.

------
cyrusshepard
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...](https://selfhacked.com/blog/google-censorship-of-health-websites-is-
taken-to-the-next-level/)

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 site to emmulate. Much higher
quality content and informative content than WebMD, IMO.

~~~
zuuow
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.

~~~
yifanl
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.

~~~
zuuow
I see your point, but in this case they are blacklisting domains by hand
because of their content, which they don't agree with. And that is very bad.
Maybe it was my mistake, thinking that their organic search was holy, which no
longer is the case it seems.

~~~
basch
I dont understand this point of view. Googles literal mission since inception
was to rank results based on how good google thought they were. Their purpose
is to editorialize results through the order they appear. Quality is defined
buy googles subjectivity.

Where did the idea of google neutrality come from? Google would be useless if
they didnt blacklist what they perceive to be spam.

~~~
luckylion
> Where did the idea of google neutrality come from?

From Google. They've stated time and time again that it's a magic algorithm
and they don't hand-pick winners and losers. And it's a good thing, too,
otherwise you're just inviting corruption. Top spots are literally worth
millions, and if there's an small army of people that decide who ranks where,
they are an obvious target for bribes.

This doesn't look that hand picked, though, more like somebody didn't check
what would happen if they rolled out some algo change and targeted way too
broad.

~~~
sixothree
They have certainly peddled the idea that "the algorithm" is what drives page
rank.

~~~
basch
This is an extremely circular conversation. Google writes the algorithm that
ranks pages.

They absolutely know, that if you search Disney, and Disney isnt the first
result, they wrote it incorrectly. They also know their product has less value
if it returns spam, which is why they fight SEO artists.

They do try to distance themselves from "choosing" the top result for "best
construction store" or "best news site" by shouting the world algorithm, to
distract the conversation. That doesnt mean they dont carefully craft the
algorithm to return a relevant top result.

~~~
luckylion
> That doesnt mean they dont carefully craft the algorithm to return a
> relevant top result.

I found [https://medium.com/@mikewacker/googles-manual-
interventions-...](https://medium.com/@mikewacker/googles-manual-
interventions-in-search-results-a3b0cfd3e26c) an interesting read on that
topic. It's not just a crafted algorithm, but there are different algorithms
and employees choose different algorithms for some queries if they/journalists
dislike what the original algorithm considered most relevant.

~~~
ceejayoz
I mean, that's how you'd train the main algorithm, right?

I'd fully expect to see these interventions fed back into the algorithm so
Google can better predict "this search term is likely to be targeted by
partisan or otherwise suspiciously motivated actors".

------
pascalxus
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 never sees the light of day due to
this problem. Google still has a long way to go before they solve the search
problem.

~~~
new_guy
> 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.

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

~~~
zentiggr
Duckduckgo?

~~~
abugheratwork
Isn't that just a wrapper for the same search engines?

~~~
limejuice
I believe duckduckgo uses bing for search results. (See
[https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/?redir=1](https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/?redir=1)).
If you compare searches on bing and duckduckgo, they are very similar.

The main advantage of duckduckgo is that they aren't tracking you and the ads
they show are just based on the search keywords not based on a digital profile
they have compiled like google and facebook.

------
DidISayTooMuch
My website has a number of articles that talk about anxiety health issues. I
was getting steady traffic of at least 100-150 users per day. Now I get about
10/day. The traffic didn't gradually slow down. It dropped by almost > 50% on
two separate days and continued that trend.

No idea what is going on. My DR has also dropped on ahrefs. I am nowhere near
examine.com, but my articles are honest and of good quality I believe.

I am on the first page of DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and Bing for my keywords. I'm on
page > 10 on Google for the same keywords.

~~~
sharedfrog
Can we get a link to your website?

------
nabnob
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.

~~~
dannyw
This is almost certainly what happened. Search YouTube for any political
subject and you will only see videos from channels with a check. It’s just a
dumb hard boost, on a hand selected list of authoritative channels.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Google change is essentially the same, just
without the visible check marks.

------
nesadi
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.

~~~
andrekandre
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?

~~~
anchpop
No, it isn't

~~~
andrekandre
why? (genuinely curious)

------
limejuice
I think examine.com needs to redouble their efforts on SEO, because if I
search for something like "creatine benefits" on duckduckgo/bing, which is a
more raw search than google, I see examine.com is way down the list at #26.
Some of the other sites mentioned in this thread are high on duckduckgo/bing
(selfhacked.com #4, lifextention.com #11)

So, I think examine.com's problems could be beyond google's search
algorithm/de-ranking.

www.healthline.com must be winning the SEO game because they are showing up #1
on google, duckduckgo, bing, etc.

A very simple observation is that examine.com is not using good titles for
their articles. "Summary of Creatine". It is too generic, and that is causing
it to be ranked lower that these other websites which have more specific
titles like "Anti-Aging Benefits of Creatine" (lifeextension), or "12 Creatine
Benefits + Dosage & Side Effects" (selfhacked).

So, maybe a better title. Or , because this "Summary of Creatine" article is
so long, maybe you need multiple summary pages tailored to different purposes,
e.g. "Benefits of Creatine", "Side Effects of Creatine", which link into the
Creatine research.

I have never been to this examine.com website before, but if every article is
like "Summary of X", then I would say you have a problem. You need to match
your articles titles to the most likely search _phrases_.

------
LinuxBender
I find this concerning. I use examine.com quite a bit. They have references to
all the studies for each topic whereas other health sites like webmd do not
always have reference links. Examine have saved me a bit of time trying to
search through all the studies on nih.gov / PubMed. I still do manual searches
to ensure they are not cherry picking, but I have been happy with Examine thus
far.

~~~
PasserBy2024
duck.com

------
CryoLogic
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.

------
Arrezz
There seems to be an increasing problem with automated content filtering
systems that filter out legitimate actors. This seems like a very broad
problem that is hard to generalize, but perhaps I'm wrong. It also seems like
the problem will only get worse as the Internet grows even larger. I wonder
what the end result will look like, if this will just magnify the effect of
walled gardens.

~~~
floatingatoll
Google is trying to be non-partisan, so that they can have their algorithms
continue to do all of the work.

They delegate “what is true” to trusted sources rather than taking a position
themselves, which is then frequently abused by wiki editors and crowd swarm
attacks.

Recognizing correctness over both reputation and quality is not something an
algorithm can evaluate with finality, and is an aspect of the old Yahoo!
Directory that Google has never been able to replace.

Google will continue to worsen at any search for which one possible reply is
snake oil, because they continue to refuse to apply human reasoning and make
biased judgements for and/or against the claims of the sites they index.

This will eventually be the end of Google, but they seem unwilling to confront
it.

------
IfOnlyYouKnew
I remember reading Google's instructions for their manual page quality
reviewers. It had two special sections, one on financial info, and one – you
guessed it – on _medical_ information.

Within those two categories, called "Your life or your money", reviewers were
asked to pay special attention to a site's trustworthiness, with a special
focus on "traditional" credentials, such as association with a known, trusted
institution.

Edit: Found it:
[https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf)

~~~
AhmedF
Yup - EAT and YMYL has been a thing for a long time. That's why all of our
authors are on an about page, why we distinguish editors vs reviewers vs
researchers, why Kamal Patle has his own page, and why we even explain our
editorial process.

------
Endy
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 like the best and fastest way to generate
profit from their desperation.

~~~
puranjay
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.

~~~
Endy
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.

~~~
puranjay
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, I've seen some things on
YouTube that point in that direction. Some random new creators have suddenly
amassed millions of views and over a million subscribers with as few as 5
mediocre videos.

These creators have either found some way to game the YouTube algorithm, or
they have been created by YouTube (or other media giants like Disney) and
promoted heavily across organic channels in an attempt to create the kind of
stars (that media companies can control) you see, say, on Disney Kids.

It's becoming clear to me that as we enter the fourth decade of the internet,
the open, democratic nature of the internet is under siege.

------
adrr
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).

~~~
duskwuff
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.

~~~
adrr
[https://serverguy.com/case-study/cloudflare-seo/](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.

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

------
ve55
>Let’s be clear: Google owes us nothing. They are a private organization, they
can do whatever they want.

This is a surprising thing to hear. I think given Google's influence, they owe
them at least some fairness.

~~~
thorwasdfasdf
And, as an entity more powerful than any living thing on this planet (with the
power to kill or support nearly any online business), they owe the world quite
a bit of fairness: Otherwise, they can watch as their search business drops to
nothing overnight. Facebook and Amazon and most B2Bs have quite a bit of lock
in. But google, if they piss everyone off, we'll we're just one tab away from
using something else: and once people realize that something else is equal or
better, it's all over for G.

I switched to duck duck go a few months ago for search and the cost of
switching was Zero.

~~~
root_axis
> _with the power to kill or support nearly any online business_

Absolutely untrue. Almost every startup I've worked for considered search
traffic to be negligible. I've also worked at a place where google traffic
accounted for 70% of sales and they actually went out of businesses a few
months after we dropped off the front-page, but there is no inherent reason
why our company deserved the top spot any more than those that replaced us on
the front-page.

------
fluidcruft
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.

------
bad_user
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.

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

~~~
dodobirdlord
Doesn't seem to be the case.

[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-
main?p...](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1)

------
tylerjwilk00
Examine.com is the most legit and reputable place to get information on niche
supplements especially some of the ones at the fringes.

It would be a huge disservice to the internet and those seeking research
information if they dropped from Google indexes.

------
oarabbus_
Google has also made disappear "harm reduction" drug-related websites, such as
Drugs-Forum.com on relevant searches; IMO, a travesty and an affront to "Don't
be Evil"

~~~
acollins1331
Pretty sure they dropped the don't be evil moniker when they decided to go
full steam ahead with evil

~~~
blobster
They changed it with "Do the right thing", which is equivalent to saying "Evil
is sometimes the right thing"

~~~
tester233
[https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-
conduct/](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/)

"And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t
right – speak up!"

~~~
blobster
[https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-
do...](https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-
from-1826153393)

------
macinjosh
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.

~~~
tictoc
I find I always !g my ddg searches. What do you use instead?

------
8bitsrule
I never use google. On searching Bing for 'nutrition supplement' I found
examine.com on page 4.

I also found the NIH's 'medlineplus' on page 4. It is certainly authoritative.
So, in a way, that's a compliment.

But apparently 'authoritative' is not the only significant factor at Bing.
Yes, I found 'nutrition.gov' and 'fda.gov' on page 1, as well as
'wikipedia.org' and 'supplementwarehouse.com'.

I suppose that 'authoritative' ought to be a primary factor in a search
algorithm. But then, I think 'accurate' ought to be a primary factor in
'translation'.

It's no surprise to me that machines are no better at distinguishing science-
based authority than they are at translation. You have to consider the culture
the machines have grown up in.

------
raspasov
Examine.com is rock solid in my opinion. Best summary of research (with direct
links to each published paper) that I’ve seen.

I often use examine.com directly without going through Google but I hope
Google will realize they have made a mistake in this case.

~~~
raspasov
P.S. I'm not associated with Examine.com in any way except for using the site
regularly.

------
Yizahi
On the other hand when I run "Astaxanthin" query in the DDG (I never searched
for this item or other supplements previously) I see Examine result on the
first page, 5th position from top. At the same time there are results from
scummy resources on the same page: 1\. Webmd 2\. Wikipedia 3\. Healthline 4\.
Mercola 5\. Examine 6\. Draxe 7\. Drweil 8\. Antioxidantsforhealthandlongevity
9\. Amazon 10\. Webmd

Hard to say what should be a proper way to deal with misinformation but
looking at human history it is probably not censorship, mostly because any and
all censorship systems are abused and corrupted eventually.

------
zaroth
I will say, I miss the days when the first comment here would be “Paging Mr.
Cutts...” followed by actual insight from Matt on what’s happening here!

Is there any other double-digit employee at Google around now who can take up
the mantle?

~~~
JimWestergren
Even if there would be, is it even possible anymore? Or is the algo so
controlled by AI and ML that it is not even possible anymore?

------
seshagiric
Bing does not have this problem (yet):
[https://www.bing.com/search?q=is+diet+soda+bad+for+health](https://www.bing.com/search?q=is+diet+soda+bad+for+health)

------
privateSFacct
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/](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.

~~~
imihai1988
I think the downvotes might have something to do with your dismissive
attitude.

How is the nationality of the lecturer (w/ a diploma) a relevant fact? Why the
"... ok" reaction? Was is more credible if the lecturer was based in SF ? Is
medicine different if you're not from SF ? Are you automatically bad at
everything you do if not from SF? As for the "invented by NASA", i do think
they were referring to this:

In 1974, the World Health Organization described spirulina as "an interesting
food or super food" for multiple reasons, rich in iron and protein, and is
able to be administered to children without any risk," considering it "a very
suitable food."[52] The United Nations established the Intergovernmental
Institution for the use of Micro-algae Spirulina Against Malnutrition in
2003.[53]

In the late 1980s and early 90s, both NASA (CELSS)[54] and the European Space
Agency (MELiSSA)[55] proposed spirulina as one of the primary foods to be
cultivated during long-term space missions. ( source:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirulina_(dietary_supplemen...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirulina_\(dietary_supplement\))
)

~~~
privateSFacct
"How is the nationality of the lecturer (w/ a diploma) a relevant fact?" -If
you are not familiar with the issues here I can't be that helpful.

The quality of academic institutions and systems varies widely on a nation by
nation basis. This is the issue I guess, a site like this and you are claiming
no difference between countries.

Note that many top US scientists come from other countries, so its not the
nationality of the scientist that is critical but the system they operate
within, and the issues with academic integrity in China, Africa and yes,
Romania are reasonably well known. Even the US and UK have struggled, and have
tons more resources (some struggles relate to their overseas programs).

Hiring your own graduates is sometimes considered a bit of a weak sign in
academia as well.

It's the totality of all these factors, bogus "endorsements" by big name media
orgs (BBC), medical doctor endorsements from overseas doctors that practice
relatively niche medicine (cannabis practice), and scientific research that
seems to take any paper written anywhere and treat it equally.

~~~
imihai1988
"If you are not familiar with the issues here I can't be that helpful". So you
are not familiar either ? Or is that you don't really feel like spending time
actually answering the question instead of deflecting ? You do seem to have
enough knowledge to dismiss a paper based solely on the "system they operate
in"

"The quality of academic institutions and systems varies widely on a nation by
nation basis. This is the issue I guess, a site like this and you are claiming
no difference between countries."

I made no such claims. What I did however was question your reaction when
seeing a romanian academic as the author of a scientific paper and that is
all.

"and the issues with academic integrity in China, Africa and yes, Romania are
reasonably well known".

Mind sharing some insight on this ? I'm genuinly interested. That seems like a
very loose enumeration created strictly to get your point across, not being
related in any way other than not being US.

~~~
privateSFacct
Sure. To get you started...

An imperfect measure is to just get a sense of where a countries top
university is ranked.

[https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-
rankin...](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-
rankings/2019/world-
ranking#!/page/0/length/25/locations/RO/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats)

is one. US news is another. In all cases top Romanian institutions are all
500+ down the list. That is pretty bad. South Africa for example has much
better universities (150 - 200 range) with UCT (and that's true - UCT has a
good reputation).

[https://wenr.wes.org/2017/12/academic-fraud-corruption-
and-i...](https://wenr.wes.org/2017/12/academic-fraud-corruption-and-
implications-for-credential-assessment)

[https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2012/07/02/the-plagiarism-
in...](https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2012/07/02/the-plagiarism-insanity-in-
romania/)

Can I ask if you have lived or worked overseas (outside of core EU/US
countries)

US has issues in its for profit colleges and universities among others as well
so it's not accurate that all US institutions are strong. I would have reacted
the same way if I recognized a the article as being from a predatory journal
([https://beallslist.weebly.com/](https://beallslist.weebly.com/))

Note, I'm looking at the website as a whole, and the claims it is making. This
includes endorsements by the BBC, endorsements by medical doctors, and
"scientifically proven" "superfoods" that "dramatically decrease LDL-C,
triglycerides, and total cholesterol while raising HDL-C"

In each case I looked into the support was not great. In other words, this
issue is about the supposedly unfair treatment of the site relative to other
sources of medical and health knowledge. And my point here is that of the
quick indicators I looked at, none looked that good.

Can you not be bothered to look at the other points I made when evaluating the
sites quality?

------
SpaceManNabs
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.

~~~
root_axis
> _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.

~~~
SpaceManNabs
Looking up astrophysics and ML stuff is usually pretty difficult. Same thing
with Japanese folk tales (revenge plays of the 18th and 19th century) and
poetry.

------
sak5sk
As someone who casually came across Examine.com a while back, I left quickly
simply because the website didn't seem credible. As others have pointed out
here, the website's design (while looks nice) does not send all the right
signals that this is a well-established research website. I know it's not good
to judge a book by its cover, but online, the cover is everything.

I know this sounds anal, but if they were to simply clean up the site a bit
like by removing all the excessive icons and cleaning up their button text,
they would come across as more credible.

Perhaps if they came across as more credible, people wouldn't be leaving and
google wouldn't get the wrong signals.

Simple and quick list of changes that would make their site feel more
trustworthy:

1\. Remove most if not all of the icons 2\. Do away with borders on non-white
background - basically just make background white. 3\. Tone down your button
text. "I'm ready to learn" sounds really shitty and obnoxious. 4\. Stop
screaming with all caps buttons 5\. Consider a different logo entirely. 6\.
Consider different color palette entirely 7\. Do away with old button styles
8\. Restore normal font size to sources - right now it makes me feel like you
are hiding them. 9\. List author credentials on every content page 10\. Do
away with ugly callout styles and excessive icon usage 11\. Re-work all the
weird "Scientific Research on ___" tabs so that they do not require so much
clicking to find basic info.

Overall, the site is just over-designed. I realize everything I say would make
the site look more WebMD-like, but that's what triggers trust when it comes to
medical info sites.

Lastly, I fully expect to be downvoted for this as design is not something
that's very respected around these corners of the web, but I felt it was
important to make that point since this is a perfect example of a website that
while looks great, does the opposite of creating a trustworthy browsing
experience.

~~~
AhmedF
Thanks - I will dig into this.

------
maxander
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, might prevent this- or at least provide a
better defensive position in the courtroom.

[0] Especially likely in countries with badly-structured healthcare systems,
such as the U.S.

[1] Especially likely in countries with badly-structured legal incentives,
such as the U.S.

~~~
nokcha
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.

------
gildas
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.

------
qwerty456127
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.

------
unixhero
What about Duckduckgo.com results?

~~~
joe_the_user
I found a couple random articles on examine on duckduckgo just now, I am now
switching to it.

------
NilsIRL
The other related issue is that no one can judge for something's legitimacy
because it all comes down to opinion and "root beliefs".

This applies to any organization.

It also links with free speech and private companies.

------
Ice_cream_suit
The content seems reasonable.

However, it looks really dodgy.

The layout, titles of articles, illustrations and just about everything makes
it look like part of a cheap ad farm.

------
CriticalCathed
Perhaps we need government regulation to stop near monopoly indexes like these
from curating results so heavily.

~~~
root_axis
Why? If google finds that curating their index in a particular fashion aligns
with their business objectives, why should the government dictate how they do
it?

It sounds like what we really need is a government maintained search index
that is accountable to the people in a way that corporations are not.

~~~
CriticalCathed
At the end of the day it's an ideological argument. Google has an almost
immeasurably large influence on the public commons and society. In my view
anything that has such a large influence needs to be regulated to ensure the
public interest and good.

Capitalism serves society which serves the people. In that order.

~~~
root_axis
> _Google has an almost immeasurably large influence on the public commons and
> society._

I disagree. Google does not have much in the way of meaningful influence over
the public commons and any influence they do have is offered up voluntarily by
the public to google. If google wants to curate specific content that is their
prerogative and if people don't like it they should boycott and protest
against google. Every single google product is non-essential unlike e.g.
corporations that dominate food, real-estate, and medicine. If the people
determine that access to an internet index is a human right, the government
should create its own index instead of picking a particular corporation and
effectively nationalizing its product.

> _In my view anything that has such a large influence needs to be regulated
> to ensure the public interest and good._

I agree that tech companies need regulations, but those regulations should
apply to all companies instead of being applied to companies that we
personally disagree with.

~~~
CriticalCathed
I don't disagree with the company -- I don't even know what that means. I
think that no entity should have that much unchecked power and influence over
society. Information, and the control of access to information, is power. In
many ways it's one of the most important resources in existence. Google is in
such a unique situation, much like 'ma Bell was back when it was broken up
into the baby bells. As such, it will require unique regulatory action; though
probably I would deal with through blanket legislation rather than a limited
and targeted regulatory approach. As such, all indexes would be subject to the
same rules.

It's not a novel idea that corporations must serve the public good. We have
long past decided that this is something government facilitates. See, public
utilities, common carrier status for telecoms, and hundreds of other
industries.

We won't agree. Like I said, this is an ideological position.

~~~
root_axis
> _I don 't disagree with the company -- I don't even know what that means_

It means to personally disagree with a company's behavior or ideology.

> _I think that no entity should have that much unchecked power and influence
> over society_

They don't have unchecked power and influence over society. Why do you think
they do?

> _Information, and the control of access to information, is power_

That's a vague platitude, additionally, picking and choosing what google is
allowed to curate does absolutely nothing to mitigate the amount of
information they collect or control. Now, if you were proposing a law that
prohibits companies from gathering certain types of information or storing it
for more than a certain amount of time, or mandating that companies must allow
you to delete or otherwise manage data collected about you, that would make
sense (and I would personally agree with the sentiment behind such laws)

> _Google is in such a unique situation, much like 'ma Bell was back when it
> was broken up into the baby bells_

I am not necessarily opposed to breaking up google (i.e. alphabet), but that
doesn't really hamper their ability to collect information about you, nor does
it dampen google's search dominance, in fact, it is likely to amplify their
dominance since it would force google.com to focus primarily on the core-
search product rather than on cross-cutting concerns across all of alphabet.

> _We won 't agree. Like I said, this is an ideological position._

Fine. Not sure what I'm supposed to take from that statement.

------
nybsop
because google is following their bottom line. they're getting paid push
healthline and webmd to the top.

------
pbhjpbhj
Edit: I since looked at the MSG page linked as there first example in the OP,
which was exactly what I expected based on the "for" comments. My original
comment below:

\---

Well I read a few comments here saying it was click-baity and such, and other
comments pushing back hard against that saying it's a detailed, trustworthy,
researched site with citations.

So, I visited via an "about" link, then clicked through the menu to
supplements (arbitrarily) then randomly to "creatine": lots of links in the
claim-heavy content, but the two links I followed were to definitions, not to
proof of the claims being made.

At the head it gives a researchers name, says their work was reviewed. Looks
great so far.

>"Our evidence-based analysis on creatine features 746 unique references to
scientific papers. " //

Wow, I'm expecting a massive citation section.

But, nothing, it's just a sales page, it doesn't _have_ citation supported
information but it tells me it sells such information ...

Am I missing something, people Googling "creatine" are looking for the info,
not a sales page offering to hook them up to the info. If other sources have
the info directly then that would be a huge reason that Google wouldn't rank
this examine.com site highly?

How many people google something looking for a for-pay resource that they, it
seems, can't even sample first?

I'm not googling looking for a site to sign-up with to get emailed a factsheet
either, even if it's free (which is a common fraud that I'm hugely wary of).

Ok, so now I'm looking at the questions, cool, click through - something about
caffeine interactions with creatine, surely the link is to the cited
scientific paper, nope just to another uncited page by the same person.

I'm not impressed upon that this is a site that should be high in google
rankings; it seems low value unless you're looking to sign up to a resource --
like if I search online for "Steven King novels" I actually want the list, not
a link to a library I can sign up to in order to find out at some time in the
future some of the novels that could be on that list.

FWIW the summary given was good, readable, seemed like it might be true, but
there's no reason to trust it at all. I'd rank it below even Wikipedia for the
content I was presented. Whatever content they're selling behind those pages
could be incredibly good, but that's not what SERPs are linking to so of
course they don't rank for that, they rank for the shallow sales page with the
same generic info on a million other pages.

~~~
AhmedF
Uhh - what?

[https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/](https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/)
\- just scroll down.

[https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/#effect-
matrix](https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/#effect-matrix) \- that's not
selling anything.

[https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/#scientific-
researc...](https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/#scientific-research) \-
click on 'fully expand' \- there's all your science + citations.

And the references themselves have carrots next to each reference so you can
click and see what is being referenced...

Here is an example of what IS being sold:
[https://a99d9b858c7df59c454c-96c6baa7fa2a34c80f17051de799bc8...](https://a99d9b858c7df59c454c-96c6baa7fa2a34c80f17051de799bc8e.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/erd/sneakpeek.pdf)

And that creatine caffeine page... [https://examine.com/nutrition/does-
caffeine-counteract-creat...](https://examine.com/nutrition/does-caffeine-
counteract-creatine/) \- literally has 7 references right at the bottom.
Again, with carrots to see where the claim is.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I was on mobile. I just re-checked. No citations show on the page I'm looking
at [https://examine.com/nutrition/do-you-need-to-cycle-
creatine/](https://examine.com/nutrition/do-you-need-to-cycle-creatine/).

Apologies, [on desktop now] the entire visible prose section of the page has
no citations _visible_. The weird expanding section hides all the citation
links and somehow _I_ missed the references at the bottom of the mile long
page because scrolling down and following links showed no references, and the
pages linked showed no references.

Once you come to the second call to action button "send me the fact sheet"
that wants an email address, I gave up looking for source-cited material
(having already gone through a few links).

[https://ibb.co/jRYBRQD](https://ibb.co/jRYBRQD) \-- circle the references on
that one for me?

You say ~"not selling anything" but the page above has a call to action button
to get the info which links to this:

[https://ibb.co/RT4F87H](https://ibb.co/RT4F87H)

Which is a massively long call to action page -- which also isn't the
supplement guide with the creatine citations that one might have expected when
following the FAQ link -- trying to sell me a pile of reports for $150 (which
is fine, but again if I got there from a google search I wouldn't ever go back
to your site looking for similar info).

FWIW I've never been to the site before, have absolutely nothing against it,
was on mobile (with standard plugins, ublock) and just called it as I saw it
as a user coming to your site fresh with no preconception other than that
seemingly half the people here felt it was junk and half the people felt it
was the best thing since sliced bread (ie really good).

>literally has 7 references right at the bottom //

My opinion from a UX perspective: Your page structure needs changing, you have
the vitally supporting info that gives credence to the info buried below the
"other junk" parts that signal the end of the pages relevant content. You'd
probably do well to break down the page completely, shorten the summary info
and provide banner links to pages with un-collapsed content. The short summary
page would include some primary citations in a highly visible manner (the
first lines of the content having superscript links) OR would have have links
to a full -- default visible -- page with highly prominent citations.

The other way to go would be to flag right up front "this bit has no citation
links in" by providing an index to the page content -- the pages are super-
long --right below the info box. This is the page structure:

* non-cited summary

* get a fact sheet (requires email)

* Things to Know & Note: links to other pages

* Cautionary notices

* Use notices

* get the same fact sheet (requires email)

* FAQ (citations on some linked pages)

* Human Effect Matrix (citations linked in titles of study names in the modals <\-- not at all obvious to me fwiw)

* Scientific Research on Creatine (this is the actual detailed info -- the page that was promised -- but it's all hidden [on mobile] for some reason).

Unless you're on hand to point out everyone's mistakes ;o) ... maybe it's just
me that missed the good content, but I think your structure is at least in
part to blame, YMMV of course (my email is in my profile if it's helpful).
Perhaps you've looked at the site so long it all seems obvious and natural to
you; that happens to me when making much simpler sites.

HTH.

~~~
AhmedF
Thanks - I will dig into this.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I think it will serve well to do so, FWIW I'll definitely visit the site again
now I have been directed to the depth/breadth of content you have there.

------
intricatedetail
Google has no problem promoting government sanctioned media outlets promoting
lies about drugs e.g . That cannabis is a gateway drug or it makes your brain
shrink. Hypocrites.

------
Causality1
Why does there seem to be a pack of Examine employees swarming this comment
section? That's not a good look, guys.

~~~
AhmedF
I'm the only employee here (co-founder).

You do realize we started off of reddit, have had tens of millions of
visitors, and so it only makes sense there nerdy people who like what we do?
[I have a comp engineering degree myself]

------
bageldaughter
The core problem with examine, in my opinion, is that it embraces the
attitudes that:

1\. A wide range of subtle personal, emotional and health problems can in
principle be solved/mitigated by taking supplements and unregulated drugs.

2\. Positive effects from small-group trials are akin to mild recommendations
to take a supplement, rather than to attempt to reproduce the effect in a
larger trial.

The very premises upon which people base their visits to examine and other
sites is flawed. Examine has zero incentive to address or repudiate them.

The success of their business is dependent on there being a perceived efficacy
for supplements and unregulated drugs, and the idea that reading online about
more varied and obscure supplements will eventually find you the one that
fixes your problem. But for a lot of perceived problems, there will simply be
no supplement-based solution.

~~~
AhmedF
1\. This is literally untrue. We consistently say supplementation is last.
Exactly one month ago:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz0tmWZA1CG/](https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz0tmWZA1CG/)

2\. Yes, we know this. That is why we note # of trials, size of trial, size of
outcome, and quality of trial.

> Success of their business.

Wrong. It's analyzing nutrition research. Here's an example:
[https://a99d9b858c7df59c454c-96c6baa7fa2a34c80f17051de799bc8...](https://a99d9b858c7df59c454c-96c6baa7fa2a34c80f17051de799bc8e.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/erd/sneakpeek.pdf)

