Is PR interest waning?

[ruben]

I have been a member of PR since 2010. Now and again out of interest I check how many people are also on the site. The numbers seem very low. Anyone know if visitors to PR is down, steady or growing? Maybe people have just given up/resigned to their plight.

 

[heapsreal]

I have been a member of PR since 2010. Now and again out of interest I check how many people are also on the site. The numbers seem very low. Anyone know if visitors to PR is down, steady or growing? Maybe people have just given up/resigned to their plight.

There are a few more sites but I think one of the main causes is almost everything that can be tried as a treatment has been tried, other than a few things outside the normal treatment circles.

If one is new and interested in antivirals, antibiotics, LDN etc etc it's all recorded here. So probably no real need to post anything but just read people's experiences.

That's my 10cents worth.
Cheers

 

[Hip]

I have been a member of PR since 2010. Now and again out of interest I check how many people are also on the site. The numbers seem very low. Anyone know if visitors to PR is down, steady or growing? Maybe people have just given up/resigned to their plight.

There was a dramatic fall in PR readership in 2018, after the medic update to Google's search algorithm, which placed alternative health and non-authoritative medical websites much further down in Google's search results. This was part of Google's policy of combatting fake news online.

After the medic update, PR was no longer getting as much web traffic from Google.

Before the medic update, PR had around 15,000 web sessions per month (a session is where a person spends some time reading a website on a particular occasion). Within a few months of the medic update, that figure went down to just 3,000. So PR had about a 5-fold reduction in traffic after the medic update.



It's very difficult to recover from this blow that Google inflicted, since Google is the the most widely used search engine, and if Google is not showing PR threads in its search results, then you don't get new readers and new members.

Other factors behind the fall in PR traffic are the rise of Facebook groups and the like, which may draw away people from PR. There are many general ME/CFS Facebook groups, and there are also specialist ME/CFS FB groups for treatments such as LDN, Abilify and craniocervical instability.

 

[Tammy]

There was a dramatic fall in PR readership in 2018, after the medic update to Google's search algorithm, which placed alternative health and non-authoritative medical websites much further down in Google's search results. This was part of Google's policy of combatting fake news online.

Interesting. I was just telling a friend the other day that I've not been able to find information or research half the stuff I was able to years earlier.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

I think that a lot of the problem is that Google is less about finding relevant information anymore, than being assaulted by sale pitches, with the first two or three pages, or more, of any search relegated to sites selling a product or a service or a product and a service. It's become like an enormous billboard on the information highway, with sales sites masquerading as information.

This wouldnt have been an accidental side effect of what @Hip cites above as the medic update. It would have been a large part of the actual intent of that.

Interesting. I was just telling a friend the other day that I've not been able to find information or research half the stuff I was able to years earlier.

I was having the same conversation with DB just last week about how hard it was to get real information thru a Google search anymore, and having to wade thru endless sites selling medical groups (Click here for an appointment), or supplements, or services or both.

It's disgusting, and as usual, it masquerades as something else entirely ....

This was part of Google's policy of combatting fake news online.

I'll refrain from commenting on this, since Google is possibly the greatest single purveyor of "fake news", phony "information", and useless trivia on the planet, Maybe in the universe, who knows ....

Google is a HUUUUGE sales site, which is how it makes the most money, leaving all of us looking for real information having to dig way way deeper to get it.

EDIT .... to add further information ....

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

As far as the Facebook and similar groups go, I've noted members returning after being disappointed by the superficiality of the information and the informational exchanges on those sites and in some cases, the hostility in some of those exchanges.

 

[BrightCandle]

I think facebook and reddit especially does worse for this type of content, the conversations we are having usually span weeks and months and Twitter/Facebook/Reddit et el tend to focus on new content published today and that is always going to produce problems. On the Covidlonghaulers subreddit someone will ask about supplements people take daily. They get wildly different answers, sometimes no answers at all and there is a frightening loss of information that comes from that especially since most content dies in /new which few people bother to view. Facebook is even worse since it fills feeds with unrelated garbage and I have no idea how any one uses twitter since it seems to amplify high interaction content over timeline.

But the search engines have done what they have done. Personally I use duckduckgo.com for my search, no tracking and a lot less advertising results, but I still feel its missing a lot.

 

[L'engle]

I was wondering about that as well. I kind of hope at least some people have improved and are not coming here as much.

The problem with machine learning. Sombody has to set the values of the input parameters, someone decides what is important, and then entire systems filter down from those decisions.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Sombody has to set the values of the input parameters, someone decides what is important, and then entire systems filter down from those decisions.

That's both true and rational. But there are entire firms that specialize in optimizing and improving the positioning in a search thread of any given posting there, which makes the playing field a little uneven, cause they ain't cheap ....

So once again, it all comes down to money and clout....

Really good to see you @L'engle .... I've been missing you ....

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Google is a HUUUUGE sales site, which is how it makes the most money, leaving all of us looking for real information having to dig way way deeper to get it.

Its awful.....

like this google news feed thing: My husband I think uses my phone and reads that crap. (otherwise, were is this crap coming from)?

If I decide to read some article posted there, its 90% of the time leading to a paywalled site or so covered in ads you want to scream.

Why do people post links to articles and you can't read them? All a big waste of time.

(I got a phone call once, somebody had gotten themselves to around page eight of a Google Search and we discovered some outrageous stuff was going on). Suppressed in the first seven pages of the search.

do maybe we should just START on PAGE 4 of a google search....

 

[xebex]

Over the years i have book marked many many pages just as i go about my reserach. But more and more recently i am having to search my bookmarks rather than google to find this information. Just glad i was organised enough to bookmark them! ah back when i had the capacity to be organised. lol

 

[L'engle]

That's both true and rational. But there are entire firms that specialize in optimizing and improving the positioning in a search thread of any given posting there, which makes the playing field a little uneven, cause they ain't cheap ....

Yes, that's exactly the problem, the people setting the parameters aren't objective.

Good to see you too!

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Good to see you too!

 

[Wayne]

I think that a lot of the problem is that Google is less about finding relevant information anymore, than being assaulted by sale pitches, with the first two or three pages, or more, of any search relegated to sites selling a product or a service or a product and a service.

Hi @YippeeKi YOW !! -- It's actually not too much different than what happens with mainstream news. The content they put on to "catch eyes" way too often has nothing to do with how important it is. Decisions on content are all calculated to monetize their somewhat capitvated audience to the greatest extent possible. Never mind that what's passed off as major news is often fairly inconsequential, and vice versa.

And don't get me started on the reality that a major focus of their news is to support the interests of their major advertisers, primarily pharmaceutical companies. Not a word from the news media on the widely reported serious adverse effects of the COVID vaccines, and literally nothing on ways to prevent or treat it naturally. It often feels criminal to me. But alas, that's the world we live in.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Never mind that what's passed off as major news is often fairly inconsequential, and vice versa.

It's not their duplicity in the news department that I find majorly problematic, bcause I pretty much expect that, it's the difficulty in doing real research on potential helpers that dont fall under the BigPharm tent, capacious as it is, and how hard is is to find information that isnt linked to someone or some company trying to selling you their products. WHich would be fine, if I could trust their information under those circumstances.

And don't get me started on the reality that a major focus of their news is to support the interests of their major advertisers,

Cant say that's too much different from the days of Hearst who managed to promote an entire war because it served the interests of his larger advertisers and shareholders .... ....

Not a word from the news media on the widely reported serious adverse effects of the COVID vaccines, and literally nothing on ways to prevent or treat it naturally

Oh, there's a lot of words. alost all of them blaming something else. Recently, they've been blaming supplements like omega 3's and vitamins. It would make me laugh if it didnt piss me off so much ....

It often feels criminal to me. But alas, that's the world we live in.

Making it even worse, there are entire firms that specialize in optimizing and improving the positioning in a search thread of any given posting there, which makes the playing field a little uneven, cause they ain't cheap, and it's only the deeper pckets that can afford that advantage. Good research, when you can find it, doesnt always come from pockets deep enough and wide enough to pay for decent research AND pay to get it positioned on the first search page ... ...

You're right. That's the world we live in, and it's a sad, sad place ........

 

[Wayne]

That's the world we live in, and it's a sad, sad place ........

Unless we do our best to brighten our own little universe, and to the best of our ability, be a beacon of light and love in this world, right? Many people do that, and I try be around those kinds of people as much as I can.

As calleous as it may sound, ignoring the bigger world with all its darker aspects is perhaps the most important thing we do on a daily basis. It's so easy to get "sucked in", by politics, by the news, etc. I think it's important to be aware of the world we live in, but soooooo important not to let ourselves get sucked in.

 

[JES]

It used to be that you could optimize the positioning in Google search results indeed. I'm not an expert on this, but my gut feeling is that those algorithms have only become more secretive and complicated in recent years and that probably even companies are struggling to understand how they can get more "attention" from Google. The faith of millions of people and millions of dollars lies in the hands of the machine learning algorithms of Google and social media. It is what it is.

It's not just that either, it's also fragmentation of user base into all kinds of social media and other instant messaging platforms like Discord and WhatsApp, which in turn have hundreds of subgroups discussing ME/CFS and long COVID. Funnily those platforms have now in some sense replaced first-generation social media like Facebook. In principle I have nothing against new platforms, but the problem is that generally speaking the exchange of information is much more short-lived and harder to search for later on than on a forum, plus most of the discussion is behind private channels.

There is a long record here of treatments that have been tested and given feedback to. Now people are likely to miss that information completely and start from scratch so to speak. I've already seen this with long COVID, where treatment approaches are let's say at a very basic level. Anti-histamines, blood thinning enzymes and such, all having been discussed to no end in PR years ago. Every now and then I still see people linking to certain very useful threads here from other services, so I guess things could be worse as well.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

t's so easy to get "sucked in", by politics, by the news, etc.

Not if you think for yourself and have even minimal critical thinking skills ....

I think it's important to be aware of the world we live in, but soooooo important not to let ourselves get sucked in.

Not an easy task, but doable if you're not swayed be popular opinion, which is usually bullshite ....

 

[Hip]

It used to be that you could optimize the positioning in Google search results indeed. I'm not an expert on this, but my gut feeling is that those algorithms have only become more secretive and complicated in recent years and that probably even companies are struggling to understand how they can get more "attention" from Google.

Phoenix Rising did get a search engine optimisation (SEO) expert to look into the situation when there was a massive drop in PR readership after the medic update of 2018. However, unfortunately none of the optimisation changes he suggested PR make to this site had any real impact.

It was not just PR which was hit by Google's medic update, but many alternative health sites. Most of those alternative health sites never really recovered, indicating there is no easy solution to circumventing the medic update.

 

[vision blue]

I also had noticed a drop in high quality analytic discussions here and mentioned it t via PM. If i just saw PR posts from the last 6 months I would not conclude we were remarkable and unique and super heavy on IQ points as I once thought Maybe its just too fatiguing to sustain

Duck duck go isnt much better and seems like my first page of hits for everything is either Amazon or Verywellhealth

Hope long covid hasnt syphoned away our talent

Maybe we are all justbon break. Still another day left of summer..(not counting our friends down under)?

God save the king