Experts Exchange - a workaround
One of the most annoying things to me is doing a google search for a common technical problem and finding a site that purports to have the answer, but then tells me I have to sign-up to see the answer.
Experts-Exchange.com is one such site that I stumble across quite often. Yes, registration is free, but it is lame to me that Google ranks them so high on competitive keywords. I was also confused at how they would rank so well since without the experts responses they are pretty light on content.
Well, this morning I figured out how they do it - they allow the engines to see the full responses while the normal web users don’t. This is cloaking, but not the kind that you’ve heard all the bad stories about - Google allows this type of cloaking for various subscriptions services (such as some newspapers).
So 2 takeaways:
1) Google should penalize these guys - Google claims to be the champion of web usability and this is a serious usability issue.
2) Just click on “Cached” under the Google description to see what Google sees - get all the content you want from EE without having to subscribe or login 
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That’s good if you only want to see the single page there but lots of times those articles have multiple pages.
Sites use a lot of different strategies to differentiate between users and spiders. Some check for javascript, others check useragent.
It’s pretty easy to get around those two things and fool sites into thinking that you’re a crawler
Comment by Dan — September 11, 2007 @ 11:32 am
That’s a really helpful tip; I can’t believe it’s never occurred to me before.
It would also be a nice feature to add to a Firefox plugin like CustomizeGoogle. It could maintain a list of said subscription sites and simply replace the target of the main link to a cached page so that you get the actual content the first time you click.
Comment by Jordy — September 11, 2007 @ 11:33 am
Good point, Dan - I don’t usually browse around sites like that looking for information, but I’m sure some people do. I generally just get roadblocked when I’m finding a solution so viewing the cache is simple. I do have a useragent switcher installed in firefox - just not worth it to fire it up to look at one page. It is helpful for investigating whether your competitors are cloaking, though.
Jordy - good call. A greasemonkey script would be simple and keep me from having to go to the cache or switch my useragent each time.
Comment by admin — September 11, 2007 @ 11:36 am
It seems like every time I get to one of those EE pages, if I keep scrolling down (past the blurred out stuff), it has the real content below.
Comment by Zach — September 11, 2007 @ 1:13 pm
OK, I swear that I wasn’t when I orginally wrote this post but I do now. Maybe I just saw the roadblocks and stopped reading. In that case, yes, scrolling would be the easiest way to get the content for free…
Comment by admin — September 12, 2007 @ 3:44 pm
Nice post - dang - both my comments someone already said!
The useragent switcher is good for getting into all sorts of stuff
Also, here is a greasemonkey script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/1898
And, your views are shared: http://www.rustyrazorblade.com/index.php/2007/07/30/experts-exchange-should-be-removed-from-google-search-results/
I hate experts exchange - but now that I know this I might actually stick around their site for a second next time I have a question.
Comment by Sam — September 13, 2007 @ 1:27 pm
Thanks for the greasemonkey script and the link, sam - I’m going to try it out. You are a scholar and a gentleman…
Comment by admin — September 13, 2007 @ 2:45 pm
[…] As a side-note, it is entirely possible this is a user error which I have been prone to make as well (read zach’s comment to see why my workaround was pointless). […]
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