Experts-Exchange - Sort-Of Cloaking?

[chilleds]

When you search for something technical on the internet, quite often you'll see a search listing with www.experts-exchange.com, they tend to be pretty good. In the past you could click the search results and view the page, you would see the question someone has answered, and their respective answer, or in most cases 'answers'. Anyway, recently they have introduced a 'View Solution' button, and in order for you to see the answer, you have to register and pay them.

Well, I was thinking to myself - If Experts-Exchange remove content to make it a 'pay-for-answers site' they will lose a lot of rankings, as a lot of the valuable content is in the Answers.

Just as I thought, when Google spiders the site they see all the Q&A's, but when we look at the site, we just see the initial question.

Need to prove it? Just do a search for "windows xp hang error event log experts exchange". Click the first item in the Search Results and scroll down to the bottom. See the answer? Probably not. Click the back button, and then when you're back on the Google results page, click the 'Cached' button under the first listing. Voila! Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and you will see all the Q&A's.

This brings me to the next topic, Google's Quality Guidelines say "...[don't] present different content to search engines than you display to users...." - Clearly, this is the complete opposite to what Experts-Exchange is doing - HOWEVER, Experts-Exchange content is of extremely high-quality, and what they are doing isn't really that 'sneaky' or 'bad'. What would Google's stance on this be? At the end of the day, Experts-Exchange are displaying different content to the search engines to get better rankings - similar to what BMW did, but they aren't using sneaky spam to achieve the rankings.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

It is clearly violating Googles guidelines - along with any other major engine. However, the question is, as allways, if Google will actually do something about it or not. You never know. Thats why those guidelines are not worth much.

[glengara]

AFAIK if they're showing the same content to Gbot they would show a paid-up member they're not not breaking the cloaking guidelines...

[ephramzerb]

I've noticed the weird behavior of the Experts Exchange site as well. For me, when I access the page and scroll all the way to the bottom, I can still see the solution. However, as soon as you click on the "View Solution" button, Experts-Exchange prevents you from viewing the solution (after you reload the original page). And once you click on "View Solution" for one question, it seems to be persistent accross the site.

Clearing your cookies and accessing the page again will allow you to see the solution (after lots of scrolling)

Its a pretty solid way to get people to pay up, especially those that need an answer NOW -- most will not scroll all the way down, and immediately click on the "View Solution" button.

In regards to Google, I don't see any precadent for this and ultimately if the user doesn't click on the "View Solution" button, they are still getting the same content as the search engine spiders would.

[chilleds]

glengara - Please point me to the place in the guidelines that says you can show 'logged-in' content to the spiders.... ....I've got 'logged-in' content that I want the spiders to see to.... ;-)

ephramzerb - it seems that on some topics/questions you can view the solution, but on some you cannot view the solutions.

Anyone from Experts-Exchange here? Can you enlighten us?

[glengara]

The cloaking guideline seems fairly straightforward, don't show Gbot something specific to Gbot.

[chilleds]

This is my exact point - Experts-Exchange are not spamming the SE's, but they are showing the engines different content to achieve high rankings.

If they showed the Gbot just the question then they would NOT achieve the high rankings that they currently do.

Its not worth spending time on, but my point is that they are effectively, as Mikkel said, completely breaking the guidelines.

[glengara]

*..but my point is that they are effectively, as Mikkel said, completely breaking the guidelines.*

Interpreting the guidelines may well depend on where you're coming from, I don't use cloaking but have no particular axe to grind against it, the way I read it, only if you send G a page specifically designed for G are you're breaking the guideline....

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

only if you send G a page specifically designed for G are you're breaking the guideline....
Nope, thats not how it works. Any kind of cloaking can get you kicked from the index and as far as I see, and have experience in, this example falls well within the limits of what you are not allowed to do.

But, Google is, in general, NOT very good at detecting cloaking so they may get away with this for some time ... and maybe not, now that its been mentioned here :)

[glengara]

So how would you define what G sees as cloaking Mikkel?

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

thats easy - anything that a user clicking through from Google don't get but the bot gets. I've seen penalties applied for the most stupid little things

[FDJA]

When you search for something technical on the internet, quite often you'll see a search listing with www.experts-exchange.com, they tend to be pretty good. In the past you could click the search results and view the page, you would see the question someone has answered, and their respective answer, or in most cases 'answers'. Anyway, recently they have introduced a 'View Solution' button, and in order for you to see the answer, you have to register and pay them.

Well, I was thinking to myself - If Experts-Exchange remove content to make it a 'pay-for-answers site' they will lose a lot of rankings, as a lot of the valuable content is in the Answers.

Just as I thought, when Google spiders the site they see all the Q&A's, but when we look at the site, we just see the initial question.

Need to prove it? Just do a search for "windows xp hang error event log experts exchange". Click the first item in the Search Results and scroll down to the bottom. See the answer? Probably not. Click the back button, and then when you're back on the Google results page, click the 'Cached' button under the first listing. Voila! Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and you will see all the Q&A's.

This brings me to the next topic, Google's Quality Guidelines say "...[don't] present different content to search engines than you display to users...." - Clearly, this is the complete opposite to what Experts-Exchange is doing - HOWEVER, Experts-Exchange content is of extremely high-quality, and what they are doing isn't really that 'sneaky' or 'bad'. What would Google's stance on this be? At the end of the day, Experts-Exchange are displaying different content to the search engines to get better rankings - similar to what BMW did, but they aren't using sneaky spam to achieve the rankings.

My 2 cents is Any of the search engines return freaky results when posed with a long, obscure phrase. They just refuse to match long phrases and the resort to some alternative. You'll see how goofy it is if you look at the highlighted words it found in the results. I tried the search except shorter like someone would really type it windows xp hang error and the experts-exchange page was in the 90 something range (page 9 of results). I think what you saw originally, when you used the phrase windows xp hang error event log experts exchange was simply too confusing for it and it grabbed onto experts-exchange and xp to provide the result you saw.

With regards to whether the new program will hurt them, I think for them, it's a trade off. If the "Answer" part of the content was valuable to the content and they just recently omitted it, you might be seeing older page results. When the spider crawls it, it will index it again and omit the "answer" which should change how it is ranked.

[glengara]

..don't present different content to search engines than you display to users."

G does take paid/restricted content into account, so it doesn't necessarily have to be to ALL users...

[FDJA]

..don't present different content to search engines than you display to users."

G does take paid/restricted content into account, so it doesn't necessarily have to be to ALL users...

Interesting... What kind of restricted content? Password protected, HTTPS, or?

[glengara]

Specifc details are unclear, but quite a number of news sites come up in Gnews results that require registration to get the full story....

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

Google have on a case by case approved cloaking from various sites. The most well know probably being NPR. However, I only know of VERY few that got that treatment - with sites like NPR, or sites that are spending VERY VERY much in AdWords :)

[glengara]

Right, but there's all sorts of stuff that comes up under the generic term "cloaking" that is in no way deceptive, and is not deceptive the sine qua non for G?

[FDJA]

Right, but there's all sorts of stuff that comes up under the generic term "cloaking" that is in no way deceptive, and is not deceptive the sine qua non for G?

I think I ran across one of those sites a couple of weeks ago, when I was searching for "hooters coupons"... Yup - had a taste for wings :)

Anyway, all I kept getting was these stupid sites that want you to give them your email address and THEN you can see the coupons. Lord, I hope Big D Stamps that stuff out!

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

Google has never said cloaking has to be deceptive to be in violation of their guidelines. They just call it cloaking. I believe Yahoo used the term deceptive clooaking at some point, but not Google.

[chilleds]

FDJA,

That long keyphrase I used for example purposes, as I couldn't find the short keywords I used when I saw this first happen.

I assure you, Experts-Exchange comes up for alot of searches, long or short terms.

[scrubs]

Google have on a case by case approved cloaking from various sites. The most well know probably being NPR. However, I only know of VERY few that got that treatment - with sites like NPR, or sites that are spending VERY VERY much in AdWords :)

Mikkel do you believe they would/did receive special treatment because of their spend in AdWords?

Also, my technical understanding of the www.experts-exchange.com redirect issue is not of the highest calibre, but..after viewing the site and doing some searches this can only be a short term success for them with what they are doing.

IMO it will only be a matter of time before someone will pick up on what they are doing with the redirect. Whether it will be in the next 6 months or year someone at G will flag it up. If you are using blackhat techniques its only a matter of time before you are penalised, IMO Googles downfall is when these penalties are put in place. In most occasions great success and money has already been made from these loop-holes....then they can try something new!

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

Mikkel do you believe they would/did receive special treatment because of their spend in AdWords?
No, I know it for a fact! I had a very large US client that got busted for cloaking but got reinstated (including the cloaking!) within 24 hours because they told Google they would pull the (VERY large) AdWords budget if they did not. Money talks ...

[glengara]

*.. they would pull the (VERY large) AdWords budget..*

So was the cloaking not working? ;-)

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

> So was the cloaking not working? ;-)
Yes it was, but most clever marketers don't just use one marketing channel or tachtic. I would have assumed you knew that

[chilleds]

Mikkel,

Just to gage, when you say very large spend with adwords - are we talking 6 figures per month?

[dgivoni]

Just to get back to the original cause for this thread, are you really sure that experts-exchange is not showing the answer publically as well.
I know that they write on every question that you need to log in to see the answer, but if you scroll down the two pages of ads, the answers are actually there public for everybody to view.
So there might not be a cloaking issue after all!?

/David

[sem4u]

That is what I thought too David.

Unless they have changed it?

[dannysullivan]

Looking here:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Q_21482033.html

I scroll down and see no solution.

Looking at what Google has cached:
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:p24nDvpr04gJ:www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Q_21482033.html+&hl=en&lr=&strip=1

I do see the solutions. Cloaking! Well, then again, if I go to the page with IE7, which I've never used to reach the site before, I CAN see the solutions at the bottom of the page.

Heading back into Firefox, if I disable cookies, voila, hello solutions, as described below.

Since Google doesn't take cookies, technically I suppose EE could say they aren't violating or cloaking. It's not their fault Google doesn't take cookies.

Realistically, I'm sure they are probably aware of how this works to their advantage. On the flipside, it's not a very secure system to keep their premium content protected. In short order, I expect people will write about how to "hack" Experts Exchange. I can see one blog with comments already talking about this: http://ray.camdenfamily.com/index.cfm/2006/4/10/Bye-bye-ExpertsExchange

[dgivoni]

I do see the solution there, when I scroll down, both in firefox and IE!?

[PhilC]

It's not cloaking, imo. If people can see it then it isn't cloaked, regardless of whether or not a person needs to be logged in. If a site chooses to log googlebot in automatically, it's the site's business. Cloaking is when search engines and people are shown a different pages, and even then, it's not always the sort of cloaking that would be penalised.

[Robert_Charlton]

It's not cloaking, imo. If people can see it then it isn't cloaked, regardless of whether or not a person needs to be logged in. If a site chooses to log googlebot in automatically, it's the site's business. Cloaking is when search engines and people are shown a different pages, and even then, it's not always the sort of cloaking that would be penalised.

Just thinking out loud and playing devil's advocate here... Might this actually be cookie-controlled reverse redirection? ;)

As I understand what's happening, the user is effectively being redirected from a doorway page, in that it contains the spidered content. The site is using a cookie controlled script to send the user to the destination page preferred by the site... a log-in page... which does not contain the spidered content. If the user is logged in, he doesn't get redirected.

The fact that the "doorway page" happens to be the one that experts-exchange actually intends the user to see if the user subscribes doesn't change the fact that the user is being redirected away from the content that the search engine saw.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

If people can see it then it isn't cloaked
If only SOME people can see it, or if people have to take special actions to see it it is indeed cloaking as engines has allways defined it. It is off course up to the site owner if he wants to do this just as well as its up to the engines if they want penalize it - and I've seen engines do just that with sites that do this, when they find out :)

[Eric Peterson]

I'm coming to the party late here. As an aside, I found this using Google's new search engine <snip>.

As an introduction, I am one of two volunteer site administrators at Experts Exchange. As such, I know a little about what EE does, but we are not privy to all of the ins and outs of EE's programming; we just have a little better idea, but we see more or less the same things you do.

To address everything I've read here:

Registration at Experts Exchange is still free; you just have to know where to look for it. <snip> There is no question that for the past couple of years, much of the tinkering done by the engineering staff has been to push people towards paid memberships (Premium Services). That has been a source of some controversy on the site, but of course, EE is also a business, and the advertising revenue stream isn't really as much as people like to believe it is.

The search results listed on Google are questions that have been closed; whether they are actually good solutions to problems is always subject for debate, but most are pretty good at worst, and outstanding at best. However, when you get to the site, what you actually see is dependent on your membership status and whether or not you are logged in.

If you're a member, you will see the question and the comments/answers. You may also see a lot of advertising which can obscure the fact that the comments/answers are on the same page. If you are what a Premium Services member, you won't see the ads.

If you are not a member, you can occasionally see the results; by that, I mean that EE deposits a cookie, and if you're not a member, you can only search the database via Google once every so often (I believe it's once a week, but I could be wrong); after that, clicking on the Google result will redirect you to a registration page.

[edited]
Not all of EE's questions are indexed by Google, from what I gather, although I don't know what criteria EE uses to allow or not allow the indexing; I know it is not a manual process (if it were, I suspect I would be managing a group of members who would be doing that work).

aka Netminder

[PhilC]

I'm not ignoring your very informative post, Eric, but since you brought the thread back to life, I want to address this:-

If only SOME people can see it, or if people have to take special actions to see it it is indeed cloaking as engines has allways defined it.
That is simply untrue. We had a lengthy debate about whether or not this type of thing is cloaking (the NYT thread), and it's come up again in the last week with debates about WMW in various places, including Matt Cutts' blog.

The Google guideline that is claimed to show that these things are cloaking is this:-

“Don’t … present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as cloaking.”

That's what Google correctly sees as cloaking - presenting different content to search engines than you display to users. It's so obvious that I shouldn't need to explain it, but I will.

When people are in a site, they are the site's users. If the site returns the same content to the engines as it does to those users, then it is not cloaking. When people are looking at a page of search engine results, they are NOT users of the target site.

I hope that puts to bed the myth that these sites are cloaking. They are doing something, but it isn't cloaking, and it isn't any kind of currently recognised spam.

The discussion should be about what the sites actually do. They allow search engine spiders to crawl pages that many people cannot see, with the specific intention of having those pages listed in the serps. It could be argued that, if a site specifically allows a search engine spider to crawl where non-users cannot go, then it should also allow all people to click the listings in the engines results and go straight to the pages. I can understand people thinking that it's wrong for them not to allow it.

That's what these discussions should be about. The sites aren't spamming, and wrongly suggesting that they are, detracts from the real issue.

[Eric Peterson]

Phil,

I appreciate your comments; they reminded me of a couple of things I neglected to include in my comment.

First, EE is very appreciative of the Google T&Cs, to the extent that if there's one subject we have to be a little careful in addressing in the EE newsletter, it's Google; EE doesn't want to annoy them.

Second, for a long time, EE's db index wasn't available to Google. Beginning not quite four years ago, it was opened up, which resulted in a distinct spike in membership, known to longer-tenured members as the "Google crush".

Since then, the interface of EE has gone through one major revision, but that had no impact on what the search engines see. A new UI is in the works, and I don't know that it will have any effect either.

ep

[PhilC]

The problem with the various recent discussions on this topic, is that some people *want* it to be spam, because they don't like it. So they tend to twist things to try and persuade people that it's spam. If they concentrated on the real issue, instead of clouding it with incorrect judgements about spam, they may even get somewhere with the engines - which wouldn't do much good for your company ;)

It may be that allowing search engine spiders to crawl where many people cannot go becomes spam in the future. It would need the engines to declare it to be spam for that to happen though, but since they've known all about it for a long time, it doesn't seem likely that it will happen.

[AussieWebmaster]

I would be amazed if they were doing it deliberately... I have posted answers over there for some time - though stopped maybe a year ago... if there has been a change of hands then maybe... but it could just be the way the system works. The Browser may force the block of the answer and the straight code view may not.

[PhilC]

I felt compelled to blog about this issue in the last few days, mainly because it rasied its head in Matt's blog not many days ago, and again in Philipp Lenssen's blog soon afterwards. The resurrection of this thread prompted my second blog post.

http://www.webworkshop.net/blog/?p=17

and

http://www.webworkshop.net/blog/?p=18

[AussieWebmaster]

I felt compelled to blog about this issue in the last few days, mainly because it rasied its head in Matt's blog not many days ago, and again in Philipp Lenssen's blog soon afterwards. The resurrection of this thread prompted my second blog post.

http://www.webworkshop.net/blog/?p=17

and

http://www.webworkshop.net/blog/?p=18

Great response and detailled blog entries... that should clear things up.

[PhilC]

Thanks, AW. It would be good if it did clear things up, but not many people will read them, and too many people really do want it to be spam, so they ain't gonna rush to stand corrected :D

[PhilC]

I've come across something else on this...

On a happier note, my colleagues and I are working on an arrangement which I think you'll be pleased with... balancing many Webmasters' interest in requiring community membership or signin to content-rich pages while still showing content in Google's search results. Stay tuned :) (we'll make an announcement in the Webmaster Central blog)
That was written by Adam Lasnik, who works with Matt Cutts, in November in Google Groups. My guess is that they are working on a system where the 'behind closed doors' pages are still crawled and indexed, but are marked in the serps with something like "registration required" and "subscription required". They could do it by making individual arrangements with sites that want to do it, but my best guess is that it will be a meta tag to include in each 'behind closed doors' page.

[{seodude}]

sounds kind of sketchy to me

[PiSk]

In the Wikipedia I found a link to a script to remove the EE hits from Google:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/1898
As the site is losing their best experts to other real free sites and the number of new members did drop from a weekly 2000 within a year to some 1000 (See: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Community_Support/CleanUp/Q_21699243.html), I guess it won't be lasting very long...

PiSk

[dangibas]

Hi all,

I just came accross this forum because as i write this experts-exchange is down and i was seaching to find out what happened. It's probably not down because of their search engine abuse but because they may be doing a full upgrade to their new style website now (which has been running in beta for a while as an option to users). Thats a guess but you never know whats happening.

Anyway while i'm here I can have my say ;)

I noticed a long while back that EE is cheating the search engines using the same technique i once considered but never carried out. Now of course I will never do it (unless perhaps it makes me several million dollars and I can run away and hide on the opposite side of the moon with all of the miss universe contestants!).

It's technically easy to carry out and im not sure if they broke the rules on purpose or my accident - but what they did was something anyone can do in a few lines of code.

Im tempted to post the code here but better keep it for my own use so i can escape to the moon one day and join EE with unlimited wealth and hot chicks ;)

Was going to sign off with the witty comment above then thought i'd say a quick thing about the logic of it all - incase some non-tech people are reading.

Can sum up in a few words...

Imagine a website appears one way to a search engine and another way to a regular surfer? Well then what you get is frustrated surfers who though they found information they need (in the case of IT pros its often very urgent and money is at stake) only to find they cant access it through any of the links.

The anger will be mixed with feelings of desperation and some people will take out their credit card and slap it accross the website as a last resort. (That person is then a customer - but in non-virtual reality a sucker being robbed in broad daylight!).

Well then thats what all of this talk is about.

Sadly this is the first time I have seen this kind of thing outside of e-commerce websites selling physical products or sex.

It's one big step back for mankind and a sad day for the Internet again.

Anyway have a nice day and enjoy surfing!

[Eric Peterson]

"...I guess it won't be lasting very long..."

That's what a lot of people said in 2000, too.

"...experts-exchange is down..."

At 2:15 anywhere in the US it wasn't down; I was on it, using at two different browsers on both the live site and the new site.

"...im not sure if they broke the rules on purpose or my accident ..." [sic]

I don't know what you mean by breaking any rules. Thousands of sites use redirection to require membership before you get to see content. The fact that EE allows non-members to see content a limited number of times before redirecting isn't relevant; the fact is that if you delete the cookie, EE doesn't know. The fact that EE considers its previously asked questions an asset that it doesn't want non-members to see is no different that what the New York Times does; if you're not a member, you can't see the content.

I find it fascinating that people feel that information isn't a commodity, or that providing a forum for people to use to exchange information isn't a service. No one seems to mind that Google can make billions for providing a service; why do people resent that a website that was on the verge of disappearing is now a reasonably profitable business?

For whatever reason, there's a myth that everything on the Internet should be free. It's all well and good that people believe that -- but idealism is fine until reality makes the cost prohibitive. You want information, and the people who answer questions at EE are willing to provide it -- but just like the streets you travel down, they have to be paid for. Would you rather pay $10 a month? Or $100 an hour? Or better yet, answer a couple of questions a month and don't pay anything at all?

The notification that the above comment was posted says "Sign up today at
https://ssl.internet.com/search/register.cgi?eventcode=SEW04F for a year's
Premium Membership to SearchEngineWatch.com and SAVE 20% -- Now only $79 for your first year (regular price is $99/year)." I haven't paid anything; if this site wants to cut off my membership, and make it so all I can do is look at cute little icons all day and NOTHING ELSE, that's their business. That they allow me to post is EXACTLY what EE allows people who sign up for free to do. That they allow me to see other threads is EXACTLY what EE does. That EE gets traffic, and possibly higher rankings on search engines is probably more a credit to the Experts than anything EE itself has done -- because even before Google made a gazillion dollars a day and had lots of rules, EE ranked high because people's problems get solved by other people.

There are plenty of things to bitch about when it comes to EE; I've probably bitched about them already to EE. But I doubt there's anyone who has anything to do with EE who knows much of anything about how to improve rankings at Google or any other search site; if there's anyone at EE who does, either he was hired in the last couple of days OR he's one of the Experts.

ep

[PiSk]

Looks like more people feel differently about this EE site as I found:
http://www.fecj.org/europeanexperts/
You're probably not one of the admins mentioned there I guess...

PiSk

[Eric Peterson]

Actually, I am; I'm the one who told him that if he didn't want to adhere to the agreement he "signed" when he joined up -- he had a tendency to flame people who didn't agree with him -- that his assistance wasn't necessary.

That he started his own site is neither here nor there.

[dangibas]

very interesting :)

[Eric Peterson]

Actually, I suppose saying it's neither here nor there is a little flippant. It is certainly relevant to EE, because he is violating their patent. I meant it isn't relevant to the discussion of whether EE is cloaking their search results.

[dangibas]

cool - so u mean u agree they are cloaking (inline with this threads subject)?

I am sure they are - and i think most posts here agree that is the case. thanks for your view-point!

[Eric Peterson]

No, I don't agree -- at least, as I understand the definition of cloaking.

Experts Exchange does the following:

IF YOU ARE NOT A MEMBER
EE deposits a cookie on your computer when you come to EE through a Google search. That cookie is little more than a counter; it says "I've done this once" (note: I don't know how many times it will let you visit before redirecting but I think it lets you visit twice). The next time you visit, the counter is incremented. On the Nth time, instead of showing you the page, you are redirected to the main "join" page.

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among others, do the same thing, except in a manner appropriate to their content.

(It is noted that the page is very heavily geared towards getting people to sign up and pay -- but there is, in fact, a free registration page. EE's owners have said they will never remove that, but they can hardly be blamed for trying to get people to pay. <snip>

IF YOU ARE A BASIC, AKA FREE MEMBER
The Google search will take you to the page, assuming you are logged in. If you are not, the above system applies. Your logged in status is kept in the cookie; if you have deleted it, or if you have told the site to NOT keep you logged in, then the system doesn't know you are a member.

In both of the above cases, you will see a boatload of advertising, to the extent that you might not realize that you can just scroll down below the ads to see the comments and solutions. Frequently, that causes people to think they have either not joined, or have to pay to see the solutions. Neither is the case -- but it can certainly be considered a little deceptive.

IF YOU ARE A PREMIUM SERVICES MEMBER (paying or not)
The Google search takes you to the page, again, assuming you are logged in.

DISCLAIMER: Experts Exchange is currently testing/debugging a new interface. They have told us that a small percentage of visitors are being redirected to the new site. However, if you do wind up on the new site, it generally means that the question you are looking at exists on the live/real/current site as well.

So in my view, EE doesn't cloak; the information that you see as the result of a Google search is going to be the same information I see (at least, in terms of seeing a question and the comments). Were I not logged in, the same thing that happens to everyone else would happen to me.

ep

[kallestie]

Being a member of EE I have to chime in here. For a measly $12.95 per month you get answers to questions that if you called in a consultant would cost significantly more. The question as to whether or not EE getting good listings under search terms that MOST people don't even search for is moot point.

The fact that some people may be getting frustrated after searching for hours for "FREE" assistance and taking it out on one of the best web sites for technology solutions is crazy.

Remember, one does not always have the staff, money or time and for those of us in this situation, the site is wonderful.

Also, there is a free sign-up. Not readily visible, but there. I, myself, pay because I believe in the site and the people that support it.

...they also have some great help for on-line marketing outside of just SEO. :D

[nico5038]

I’ve been participating at EE for some 6 years as an expert and I’m (have been?) the #1 MS Access expert from 2002 till 2007 answering some 7,000 Access questions and posting over 40,000 comments. I was also active as a moderator (modulo and GranMod) for 4 years and posted in that capacity over 100,000 comments.

When you think that such a track record does give you some credit you’re however at the wrong place at EE. I got called names by another member and no action was taken. When I guarded the site from the sometimes crappy comments of this member I got suspended and all links (some 40) in my comments pointing to my page holding previously Access samples and now stating my suspension were removed. (http://www.geocities.com/nico5038/) Finally asking the site owners for an explanation for this suspension gave no response at all.

The new owners have found a way to use innocent volunteers to generate a real cashcow that allows them to run an office with some 15 people and to pay the experts with worthless points that won’t even buy them a cup of Starbucks coffee.

The new interface will have costed a lot of money, but besides the better looks it doesn’t load faster, doesn’t show the questioner anymore and is another example of the foolish American idea that it’s only the outside that counts.

Finally the crappy answered questions (without a real answer and/or with broken links) aren’t getting any attention. The closure of questions to give the experts their points has the first priority as that’s what makes them coming back and getting hooked up.

I’ve found another site www.thescripts.com that’s really for free and that does value experts. It’s growing fast and I meet a lot of old EE collegues there.

But ofcourse, when you want to pay for the lookup service of the EE expert, be my guest :-)

Nic;o)

[AussieWebmaster]

Thanks for the update Nico

[Eric Peterson]

It doesn't include the part about you misusing your privileges to moderate questions for your benefit, or the part about stalking one member to "guard the site from the sometimes crappy comments", or the part about being the only Mod in the history of the site to get himself into so much hot water that we were compelled to create a new account for you -- but otherwise, it's a marginally accurate post.

It's not about you, Nico. Get used to it.

[nico5038]

It doesn't include the part about you misusing your privileges to moderate questions for your benefit,..

Acquisitions are easily made, you'll find however no evidence in the over 100,000 comments I've been posting as a moderator that I had a benefit of my moderatorship. It has been an acquisition of "PageEditor" jimhorn that was taken for granted, but never checked upon...

.. stalking one member to "guard the site from the sometimes crappy comments"...

That member did call me names and the administrators weren't able to handle this. Moreover, this member didn't object a single time when I proved that comments from him like "WHERE A=True AND B=True OR (A=True AND B=False) OR (A=False AND B=True)" were crap. Just surprised to learn that my quality comments weren't appreciated.

...being the only Mod in the history of the site to get himself into so much hot water that we were compelled to create a new account for you...

This (again) was caused by the "PageEditor" jimhorn that obviously had a pick on me. When getting suspended his post on another site was "I WIN".
Now he's even "blacklisting" questionners at the site(http://www.experts-exchange.com/Community_Support/Community_Advisor/Q_22441691.html).

For you I would like to add that this PageEditor was allowed to reveal my moderator alterego's openly on the site, but that when I did the same for the other moderators I got suspended. Looks to me you have some double standards.....

Really glad I've stopped spending my valuable time at EE. Now I made it my mission to warn other experts about the treatment they can get there and the questionners about the load of crappy answers that are left untouched.
The suspension of my nico5038 account is seen by me as "illegal" and an abuse of your admin powers. The fact that all links to www.geocities.com/nico5038 have been removed from my comments look really like a coverup of your action.

Have a nice day :-)

Nic;o)

[Chris Boggs]

This thread had run its course and should be closed. If you have relevant new information, please feel free to start a new thread and cite this one for reference.