From Mark Sisson's "Sunday with Sisson" mailer:
Last week, Robb Wolf posted a pretty shocking image on his Instagram account:
In other words, so-called "alternative" health websites—ones that offer substantive counterpoints to the conventional wisdom regarding diet, health, and wellness—have taken a massive hit on their visibility in Google search, while the ones peddling the conventional lines of advice have seen a huge increase in their visibility. Since Google is the world's largest search engine by far, so much so that "to google" means to search for something on the Internet, this has inevitably reduced our search (and overall) traffic.
Some of this is due to Google weighting their algorithms toward "expert" advice, toward opinions and articles written by people with MDs and PhDs after their names. I've tried to overcome this by changing the way I cite research. I've always cited and linked to tons of medical studies, far more than the "experts" like Mayo Clinic and WebMD ever have, but now I'm actually listing a "References" section with those proper citations in the proper academic format. You've probably noticed. It's helped a bit, but the drop-off has been larger than this can account for.
In my opinion, this development just means that people like me and Robb are over the target. We're a threat, and institutions are worried. We've already had a huge effect on the way people eat, live and exercise. Grandmas are going keto. Grandpas are doing CrossFit. Your kid's school teacher is IFing. Large multinational food corporations are buying boutique avocado oil-based mayo brands for large sums of money. It's an interesting time. Conventional institutions are feeling the heat, and this might be one way to try to stem the tide.
You see it in the big, concerted, coordinated effort to push fake meat substitutes, switch the entire world over to a diet consisting of half a burger a week, and promote silly conspiracies like keto crotch—often all involving the same players.
I'm not saying it's nefarious, but it's very curious.
Well, don't worry. I'm not going anywhere. Neither are Robb or any of the other "alternative" health writers and creators. And most importantly, the average person is waking up to the fact that they've been misled for decades about what constitutes a healthy lifestyle. It simply isn't working, and attempts to quash or suppress effective information that contradicts the official line will not work, algorithms be damned.
Truth wins in the end.
Thanks for reading today, folks. Thoughts, reactions to the above? Share them on the comment board of this week's Weekend Link Love. And have a great holiday weekend. More at https://www.marksdailyapple.com/blog/
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