Google Medic Algorithm change

Sounds rather technical and uninteresting and I know its a far cry from the usual topics on this forum. But it's important.

The tentacles of Big Data and Big Business extend everywhere in pursuit of private profit and power, to engulf and devour.

It looks like Big Data has teamed up with Big Pharma and Big Medicine to throttle the alternative health and supplement industries simply by reengineering and distorting the search engine parameters of Google. I guess Big Pharma and Big Medicine just really really didn't like the inroads alternative medicine has been making on their profits and power. 

This is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Who knows what other similar manipulations of the economy and public consciousness for big business gain are going on? Of course we have been warned. But the little guys can do so little. And this is supposed to be a democracy.

From leading bionutritional provider Jon Barron's recent announcement:

"In 2018, Google released what is known as the Google Medic Algorithm change, which was specifically designed to censor alternative health websites and clobber their rankings. It began to hit full bore in January of this year. Both Baseline Nutritionals and our sister site, the Baseline of Health Foundation were affected. Rankings for most alternative health sites fell off a cliff.

To give you just one example of how bad the hit was for alternative health sites: unique visitors to the Baseline of Health Foundation website (jonbarron.org), which was formerly one of the most visited alternative health sites in the world, dropped from 250,000 unique visitors a month to 4,000 a month. That’s a 98% drop in a matter of weeks—identical to the drop Dr. Mercola and most other alternative health sites have seen in the same timeframe.

And more to the point, Baseline Nutritionals has seen a corresponding drop in “new” visitors. How did this happen? If you search on "colon detoxing," just as one example, we used to come up one or two in every search. Now, we don't even appear until page 5, well past where anyone looks. Who replaced us? WebMD, the Mayo Clinic, and Medical News Today. Those sites have a dubious attitude towards colon detoxing at best. In other words, Google decided to censor the alternative health point of view and force feed you the medical point of view. Now, repeat that scenario for every other topic relevant to alternative health, and you can see how the number of visitors to alternative health sites has plummeted. In case you’re interested (and don't mind getting a bit angry), rankings for the major drug-oriented sites climbed as a result of the algorithm changes."

Sounds rather technical and uninteresting and I know its a far cry from the usual topics on this forum. But it's important.

The tentacles of Big Data and Big Business extend everywhere in pursuit of private profit and power, to engulf and devour.

It looks like Big Data has teamed up with Big Pharma and Big Medicine to throttle the alternative health and supplement industries simply by reengineering and distorting the search engine parameters of Google. I guess Big Pharma and Big Medicine just really really didn't like the inroads alternative medicine has been making on their profits and power. 

This is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Who knows what other similar manipulations of the economy and public consciousness for big business gain are going on? Of course we have been warned. But the little guys can do so little. And this is supposed to be a democracy.

From leading bionutritional provider Jon Barron's recent announcement:

P.S.

There is a lot of very technical mealy-mouthed babble about this on the Internet, but a Google search itself shows no mention of the actual and obvious losers and gainers. Nobody is actually identified. For the powers-that-be far better to obfuscate and hide the inevitable major drivers of change: money and power.

P.S.

There is a lot of very technical mealy-mouthed babble about this on the Internet, but a Google search itself shows no mention of the actual and obvious losers and gainers. Nobody is actually identified. For the powers-that-be far better to obfuscate and hide the inevitable major drivers of change: money and power.

I don’t know if it’s obvious, but this is the type of thing I’ve been ranting about on the hidden forums. It shouldn’t be hidden imo, because if we don’t oppose this sort of thing now, sooner or later we won’t be allowed to have a forum like this.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, misinformation abounds and lay-people have proven that they do a piss-poor job of evaluating/identifying that misinformation. And health is too important to depend upon misinformation. But on the other hand, how valid and reliable (and transparent) is this process?

An overview of the outcomes from the change:
https://searchengineland.com/googles-aug...uch-303538

Manual for evaluation of quality and EAT (expertise, authority, trustworthiness):
http://www.thesempost.com/google-search-...ness_E-A-T

It certainly doesn't help the case that this is a "bad thing" to depend upon criticisms from purveyors of quackery (e.g. colon detoxing), though.

Linda

I don’t know if it’s obvious, but this is the type of thing I’ve been ranting about on the hidden forums. It shouldn’t be hidden imo, because if we don’t oppose this sort of thing now, sooner or later we won’t be allowed to have a forum like this.

How did you get from "a change in how google ranks search results" to "google has control over website content or existence"?

Linda

It certainly doesn't help the case that this is a "bad thing" to depend upon criticisms from purveyors of quackery (e.g. colon detoxing), though.

Linda

So, then, you think it's a good thing to greatly curtail the information on alternative medicine available to the public? Since of course our benevolent betters, the captains of the incredibly profitable big pharma and big medicine industries always speak the truth about their therapies and cover up nothing, with no self interest considered? So, the ignorant rabble need to be conditioned and controlled for their own good?

How did you get from "a change in how google ranks search results" to "google has control over website content or existence"?

Linda

If you can’t see a connection then I can’t help you.
Here’s a clue - propaganda/censorship. 

So, then, you think it's a good thing to greatly curtail the information on alternative medicine available to the public?

Not really, unless you wish to imply that Alt Med = misinformation. I think it's probably a good thing to make reliable and valid information more readily available and misinformation less so. The only examples given in the OP were of sites like Dr. Mercola, which are cesspools of misinformation. So all that was demonstrated was that the new algorithms catch low quality sites. What would have been useful, if the idea is to show that there is a problem with google's new algorithms, is to demonstrate that it is also catching decent quality sites.

Since of course our benevolent betters, the captains of the incredibly profitable big pharma and big medicine industries always speak the truth about their therapies and cover up nothing, with no self interest considered? So, the ignorant rabble need to be conditioned and controlled for their own good?

I don't think the ignorant rabble need to be conditioned and controlled for their own good. I think that the ideal would be that people are generally well-informed about how to find decent information. If google incorporates the idea of EAT and quality into their algorithms, that would be one way to find decent information going forward (if their process is valid).

No examples were given of preference to sites which hide the truth or cover up harm. Instead, the examples given were of WebMD (which is okay as a source - not my first choice, except for the Emedicine part, which is good), Mayo Clinic (which is a good source and fairly Alt Med friendly), and Medical News Today (which I'm not familiar with).

Again, if you want to claim their algorithm is bad, then it would be useful to refer to decent sites which were substantially downgraded, or poor sites which were substantially upgraded, rather than sites which are defending their self-interest in selling lots of unnecessary and possibly harmful colon detoxes.

Linda

If you can’t see a connection then I can’t help you.
Here’s a clue - propaganda/censorship. 

Okay. I figured it was something like that.

Linda

I think that the ideal would be that people are generally well-informed about how to find decent information.

There’s the problem. 
Who decides what is or isn’t decent information?