cyrusshepard

Right. And his new, non-venture capital model for raising money for his next company seemed to work pretty well: https://sparktoro.com/blog/raised-a-very-unusual-round-of-fu...

Your comment seems to assume that 1) employment levels for software engineers is the same in India 2) that the OP has overstated the social stigma of layoffs in India, and finally 3) the current employment landscape that you find yourself in will last indefinitely.

Based on this, I suspect it's highly likely the hubris in this comment will not age well.

My guess is because it was self-submitted, it was held to a higher standard. Fair enough.

And in some universes the title could be considered click bait, although it is accurate in this case.

Moderation is a tough job. You never win.

That said, the revised HN title seems like it was written by bad AI. The point seemed to be to drive it off the homepage. In that, the HN title succeeded.

Regardless, I'm happy the article generated a lot of interesting discussion before manually being deemed unfit.

It is curious how at the same time the title changed, all the top comments (which were generally supportive) got pushed to the bottom. And now, including yours. Assuming this article touched a nerve at the same time someone was having a bad day.

Author here. Frustrating situation. As the title is long at 84 characters, we know that Google is definitely going to rewrite it. The simplest way is to break it into parts and get rid of the shortest part that still makes sense.

So maybe take

'Towards Platform Democracy: Policymaking Beyond Corporate CEOs and Partisan Pressure'

And 1) condense it and 2) lose the colon

'Platform Democracy is Policymaking Beyond CEOs & Partisanship' (60 characters)

If that is too condensed, you could try a a short title in the <title> and a longer title in the copy.

So an interesting distinction here is required! When Google says they use the title 80% of the time, they mean they use the title 80% of the time to create their search result title, which they may or may not modify. The other 20% of the time they use an H1 or other elements on the page.

I developed painful gout at 40. Now 10 years later, I hardly ever have any pain at all.

Lots of research link gout to different makeups of gut bacteria:

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20602

And I certainly changed my diet over the past 10 years, and my gut bacteria has become more diverse and presumably more healthy as a result. I've verified this through various stool tests and 3rd party microbiome trackers over the years (uBiome, Thryve)

I don't want to get into pseudoscience or offer anyone advice, but I can tell you that my experience with increasing specific bacteria that increase butyric acid within the gut has seemed to work for me. In theory, one could do this by eating butyrate promoting foods such as almonds, apples, barley, kiwifruit, and more, or take a bifidobacteria-enhancing fiber such as GOS.

It's a devil's bargain. If you opt-out of snippets, it simply means somebody else claims the top spot, and you are left with even less traffic (by a significant amount)

I think what folks are missing is that a lot of these "zero-click" searches happen as a result of Google scraping your website, and displaying the results as a "featured snippet."

Yes, they link to you below the featured snippet.

No, more people don't click, because they've taken the answer from your website and displayed it right in their search results.

For example: If I'm searching for "best nail for cedar wood" Google gives me the answer: STAINLESS STEEL - and I never had to click through to the website that gave the answer: https://bit.ly/2MdovdP

• Yes, this is good for users (it would also be good for users if Netflix gave away movies free)

• Overall, the publishers who "rank" for this query receive fewer clicks

• Google earns more ad revenue as users stick around on Google longer

Ironically, Google has a policy against scraping their results, but their whole business model is predicated off scraping other sites and making money off the content - in many cases never sending traffic (or significantly reduced traffic) to the publisher of the content.

Perhaps you don't know who Examine.com is, but they are cited by the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, CBC, multiple Wikipedia pages all over the world, and over 12,000 other websites. I assume they did more homework than you.

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

FWIW, Dan (the author) has an outstanding reputation for professionalism and integrity in the marketing world. If he says he did something for ethical reasons, to those who know him, he's earned the benefit to be believed. (If you don't know him, you'd be forgiven for being suspicious)

And credit should be given to him for educating everyone on this exploit.

FWIW, I started learning about phage therapy from John Herron, who runs the Gut Health Protocol. He sells a phage product so keep that in mind, but he's gathered a lot of research here: https://www.theguthealthprotocol.com/wp/phage-therapy/

To a degree. Also, depends on the service you use for testing. For example, Ubiome will show your bacteria down the genus level (e.g. Enterococcus) but not the species level (e.g. Enterococcus gallinarum)

Most commercial phages in the US (can't speak for the rest of the world) are comprised of these 4:

LH01 – Myoviridae LL5 – Siphoviridae T4D Myoviridae LL12 – Myoviridae

You can research all of these, but these 4 specifically target a specific but broad range of potentially pathogenic bacteria, including E. Coli (though not all E. Coli is bad) and other species. Generally if you take them together they provide effective treatment against a broad range of inflammatory agents.

Disclaimer: Not a doctor, just someone who suffered decades of gut problems and eventually healed himself.

If anyone is interested in a way to treat E. gallinarum—and other potentially pathogens—without antibiotics, you should look into phage therapy. Phages are viruses that attack specific bacteria, have been used for decades, are commercially available (even on Amazon) and are generally considered safe for human consumption.

Granted, phage therapy typically targets gut pathogens, and in this study the E. gallinarum had traveled to other parts of the body. But many people I have talked to who use phage therapy have reported improved symptoms and in some cases even reversal of autoimmune disease.

And yes, phages that you can buy today without a prescription target Enterococcus bacteria, which includes E. gallinarum.

The gut is a wonderful, mysterious place that most of us neglect.

Oh, the magic of editing.

True story: I loved the movie Cocktail with Tom Cruise. I set out to learn all his bar tricks from the film, including lighting a match with one hand. Took me two months and many burned fingers before I mastered it. Then, I re-watched the movie to make sure I was doing it right, only to realize it was an editing trick and he never really did it. Oh well. I learned a skill for life.

I agree that would be amazing. Sadly, for every big advertiser that cuts back, a million others are willing to fill the void with a slightly smaller bid in order to gain exposure and eyeballs on their product. And publishers will sell it to them to keep the lights on. And yet, prices go up year after year on increased competition. Google's profit was up 29% last quarter on stronger ad sales, and Facebook was up 71% over last year. A race to the top, or the bottom?

Good overview of the benefits of calorie restriction, but doesn't touch on two of the most important schools of thought of the past couple years.

1. Calorie restriction is almost impossible for most humans to follow long term

2. Many of the same benefits of calorie restriction may be achievable through intermittent fasting, which is much easier for people to follow. I've been experimenting with a daily 16 hour fast (all calories consumed within an 8-hour window) and have seen small improvements in my energy and general well-being, although it's decades too early to say how this will impact my longevity.

Relevant articles: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep33739 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622429/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hunger-gains-...

Logical fallacy. Social status ≠ genetics. Social status is unfortunately often determined by income, race, religion, and a host of other nonlogical designations.

In this experiment, social status was determined by "newness" to the group. Nothing to do with genetics.

All these navigation elements are secondary, and further down the page. You have a point that if the user wants to, they are free to click any link they want. The fact remains that the top-most, primary navigation element on an AMP page is an "X" that closes you out of the publisher's page to send you back to Google. After that, the second most prominent navigation element invites you to browse other publishers. By design, the publisher's own links must come after these two elements.

Yes, accept our platform, design choices, and navigation framing or we won't put you in a competitive position with other search results. While AMP isn't a ranking factor (Google has stated this) AMP results are displayed more prominently. Arm twisting at it's finest.

This is a good response and I appreciate Malte's effort to engage publishers, but it doesn't calm my nerves about the biggest publisher complaint about AMP:

Google owns the chrome (top navigation) on all AMP pages. This makes it easy to navigate back to Google (why would you ever want to leave?) and other publishers in the AMP ecosystem, but much harder to navigate to the publisher that created the page in the first place

In essence, this means that what was once a publisher-owned page is now shared property: between the Google and the publisher. By controlling the top navigation, Google more easily controls the content the visitor sees, keeps visitors on Google longer, provides greater opportunity to track visitors, and perhaps most importantly has the opportunity to earn more ad revenue.

Now imagine if this was a requirement for ALL pages served in Google search results. You publish a page and it appears in Google, but when the user clicks on it Google has pasted a new navigation on the top of your page. This is exactly what is happening with AMP.

This is especially troubling in light of all the anti-trust controversies Google is finding itself in, both in the US and abroad. A recent study showed that 49% of all Google clicks go to Google properties of one kind or another (Maps, YouTube, Ads, etc) http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/intro-to-mozcon-2016/24-L...

Does AMP count as another Google property that will push more than 49% of clicks their way? Hard to say, but it's a disturbing trend for a monopoly and a hard pill for publishers to swallow.

1. Excercise. The more variety, the better. Excercise supports nuerogenisis. 2. Proper diet. Can't believe how much smarter I became in my 40's when I actually started eating vegetables, seeds, nuts, leafy greens, fish, etc. 3. Sleep 4. Hydration 5. Socialize

Lots of research for all of the above, but experiance is the best teacher.

I wholeheartedly see your point, but I believe the well-intentioned objective is to gain perspective from like-minded individuals who can empathize. Much like a support group. Depressed alcoholics share a common bond not only around depression, but the specific problems associated with alcohol. Founders often find themselves lonely with their problems and want to connect with others with similar experiences.

A quick 2-minute check shows that yes, indeed the site violates Google guidelines. If you check the backlinks using any number of checkers (Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs, Majestic SEO) you can find a number of over-optimized 'unnatural' backlinks residing on spammy link-exchange pages in clear violation of Google's guidelines. The only reason to place links on these pages would be to try to rise higher in Google's search results.

Yes, it feels unfair when Google drops you in search results, and Google has changed the rules over the years and it's hard to keep up with shifting guidelines.

In truth, the website can recover from this. The same people who placed spammy links on 3rd party sites in order to manipulate rankings are probably savvy enough to mount a clean up effort to get those links removed and/or file a disavow request with Google (which basically tells them to ignore those links)

Ironically, Eric Schmidt once tried to scrub Google of unfavorable search results about himself, and he was told they do not do that for individual results. ;)

Perhaps not worthless, but his obvious conflict of interest should preferably been disclosed at the beginning of the article, and not in a footnote.

In my mind, this severely damages the author's credibility.

+1s and Google+ posts are two separate things.

A Google+ post passes SEO benefits (through linking) independent of the number of +1s it has. So although Google doesn't use +1s directly, it does use the link signals found naturally in the Google+ post itself. Because these link signals are by design blocked by Facebook and Twitter, this makes Google+ a superior platform from an SEO perspective.

Cyrus here (the author)

Thanks Matt, I think we both agree that Google doesn't use +1's directly in your algorithm. But are you implying there are no SEO benefits to posting popular content on Google+? Google does use PageRank and anchor text, 2 things present in Google+ posts that aren't passed as easily in Facebook and Twitter. It seems to me that a popular post on Google+, shared and linked to by well known authorities, is just like earning a high authority editorial link - and this is a bit different than most other social media platforms.

Now, if you tell me you treat Google+ differently in a way that blocks link juice, blocks anchor text and doesn't pass link equity, then I think I would have to rethink my thesis. Regardless, I think we're both on the same page here. The goal is not to accumulate a massive amounts of +1's (and I'll amend my post to make that clear) but to share high quality content on Google+ and build your influence through this channel, and this can lead to real world success.

My argument is that Google+ as a platform passes actual SEO value, and I don't think this is a bad thing or something that needs to be debunked. Feel free to disagree if I'm way off base here.

He killed it for sport, the rest is an excuse. If he were concerned about the community food supply he could have donated food. Anyone who hires "booth babes" for spokespeople and is a fan of 24 (a show I used to work for) hunts because he enjoys it. Bob Parsons does not spend thousands of dollars to kill elephants for humanitarian reasons.