Experts Exchange needs to die in a fire. They're the reason I wish Google had a 'never show results from domain X' feature. This graph makes me very, very happy.
> They're the reason I wish Google had a 'never show results from domain X' feature.
They do.
-site:experts-exchange.com
To avoid typing that into all the search boxes, just modify the query string for google that you use to search for with the search box/keyword for searching in the url bar. I have that and a couple of dozen others in the "g" keyword in my url bar.
Thanks, this is a great bit of news. I hate experts exchange, they are against everything I personally believe with regards to helping people, and our roles as technical professionals.
If by that you mean the search field in a google page, yes you can, for example with a greasemonkey script.
However, I see little point in that -- searching from the location bar just seems easier to me. CTRL-t gets you a new tab with focus in the location bar from anywhere, and I don't have to wait for any page to load to type in the query. Even if google is fast, it's still not as fast.
Also, you can set up other easy searches. For example, stuff I have used in the past 2 hours:
- gis (google image search)
- gfi (google finance)
- listof (google I feel lucky, site:wikipedia.org with search string "list of %s")
Eventually, perhaps. But I happen to know there is A LOT of Microsoft SQL Server and MS Exchange help on there that can be found no where else -- well, at least nowhere outside of a 100 page technet article of some of the deepest technicalese you have ever read.
And what's to say Stack Overflow won't become like EE some day, and start holding answers hostage? EE wasn't always this way you know... [edit: I realize this is a completely different line of thinking -- it just popped into my head]
> And what's to say Stack Overflow won't become like EE some day, and start holding answers hostage?
Joel and Jeff have explicitly tackled that issue in the podcast, with reference to IMDB and CDDB as well as "the hyphen site". All the user generated content on Stack Overflow is licensed under cc-wiki and available as an anonymised data dump. http://bit.ly/cGWxT5
If that were to happen, someone could fork the site using the last CC-licensed data dump. I would hope that would happen immediately upon any change in licensing away from CC/GPL/GFDL/similar.
It's not impossible but they can't just make off with the data in the way that CDDB did.
(Now, if you want to talk about a company abusing the community ... look at Yelp.)
From the beginning, Stack Overflow has pledged to not be evil. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/03/whos-your-arch-enem...
EE did used to have nicer policies, that's how they got all that good will that convinced users to do all that work, and fill in all those good answers.
And what's to say Stack Overflow won't become like EE some day, and start holding answers hostage?
At worst they could only hold new answers hostage. All of the existing questions and answers, every single one of them, is licensed under cc-wiki and is made available to the public via data dumps on bittorrent. You can quite literally download all of the question and answer data for all of Stack Overflow, if they turn evil you can host your own site with all of the old data, or someone else could. The latest data dump was 11 days ago: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/category/cc-wiki-dump/
yep I can confirm this, if you ever try to do some MS Exchange programming I guarantee you will: A) Have a lot of questions B) Will find most of your answers on EE not on SO.
SO is better for finding iPhone or C# related answers.
I'm not so sure about that. SO users are quick to answer simple/easy problems but those are never the ones I need help with. Ask a question that requires a lot of expertise and some effort to answer, and it's nothing but crickets chirping, whereas if I'm lucky enough that someone already had my problem on EX, it is usually answered fully, even if it took 3 people multiple tries and a lot of effort to get there.
Not to say that I'd ever pay for EX, but it obviously has its uses...
I searched google help for how to block a website from google results. ALL complaints were because of experts exchange. I don't know if anyone voluntarily goes to EX. SO I go to regularly. Check for how many requests a single user does to EX. Basically a person might go to EX's 3 or 4 pages in a day by accident then never again if possible. A unique ip is not a good factor.
Not voluntarily, but would I be out of place saying that I've actually used some of the information on the EX hits, and they have helped me? That's not to say I didn't wish the answers were on StackOverflow instead though.
My friend was paying EE for their service and moderately happy with it until I showed him how they display the answers publicly after the scroll barrier of google originated requests (and not others). His response was something along the lines of "why those little..." He promptly cancelled his subscription with them.
The fact is that the only reason they rank highly at all is by cheating google's indexer and using a cheap psychological trick. Their business model is naiveté. Once you point it out to their customer base, they will quit the service.
How have I never figured this out before? It seems so obvious in retrospect.
I have keyword searches setup in Firefox for StackOverflow, ServerFault, and SuperUser, but I hated getting blog and meta results in my StackOverflow searches. This will help in a big way.
Is that just a practical decision, based on the fact that users who visit with a DuckDuckGo referrer don't see the meat of the answer? (If ExEx treated DDG visitors the same as Google visitors -- showing the answer after a long scroll barrier -- then what?)
Although I wholeheartedly agree that StackOverflow is orders of magnitude nicer than experts exchange, I really don't trust compete and their numbers.
compete reported a sharp decline of unique visitors to our site in nov and dec, even though those were are best months ever for both traffic and business (according to google analytics, and our bank acocunt). Of course there's nothing we can really do about it. What can you do? Complain? Write a flame blog post? Compete's numbers are not solid, they are all estimated from some crazy algorithm. It would be nice to just brush it off, but when potential customers are looking at compete and thinking we are tanking, it's bad news.
I think this is an important point. As much as it's nice to think that SO is destroying EE. There's no evidence that compete.com's numbers are anything but fiction.
I really don't like the way Experts Exchange cheats the Google indexer. You can still scroll down to the bottom of their pages now and/or just read what's in the Google cache ... but it's always seemed disingenuous. Either than or give me the option to search for non-paid content. I don't believe stackoverflow has ever user-agent-sniff-cheated.
You can only scroll down if visiting from Google. Copying the URL and pasting it into your browser returns a page without the answer. I'm suprised Google didn't exclude them years ago. (Apologies if that's what you meant).
I didn't know this and I'm amazed. They've been receiving complaints about experts exchange for years. Why haven't they been tossed into the black hole? What motivates Google to allow sites like this to get the top hit on searches?
Google will happily show garbage rather than showing nothing. (Welcome to the entire business model of some companies.)
Experts Exchange plays right on the edge of what their policies allow, but previously they have backed off in response to feedback, and nixing them would cost Google millions of searches in a key influencer demographic getting nothing.
Thanks for the response. Perhaps I don't understand how search engines work: If I search for a programming term and EE is the top result, what do Google lose if they kill or seriously de-prioritize the EE link? Wouldn't Google just show me the rest of the links?
It's not like EE pages are the only result for searches...
Yeah, but for the kind of searches EE is winning for, all or most of the rest of the links are garbage.
Think like a junior developer for writing queries needed to write Big Freaking Enterprise backend software. For example, the first thing that popped into my head for a query likely to generate an EE result was [sort combobox java] -- it is something that you'll actually have to do for Big Freaking Enterprise development, it uses an "unsexy" programming language, and the phrasing is just off enough that people who know what they're talking about wouldn't phrase their pages that way.
No, but the sheer amount of junior developers who asked questions there over the last 10 years guaranteed that every possible way to incorrectly phrase a question is already answered.
SO is - better open model, better interface, but lacks volume especially in some areas, and lacks trolling-question controls (i.e. "which language is better" type of million-answer threads). But it will mature, I find it interesting enough to contribute.
EE pages are so annoying that people hit "Back" and think "what the hey, the real results are crap" before clicking on an ad. Without the EE pages, people would just think.. "ah, can't find an answer" and go away ;-)
The kind of 'cloaking' Google cares about is feeding the crawlers different data than what a Google searcher would get.
The kind of cloaking ExpertsExchange is doing privileges Google's crawler and users, giving Google an advantage over competitors. What would motivate Google to punish such a site?
If I search for a programming tip and find it through Google, I might bookmark it or use bit.ly to tweet it. If I have to scroll down past a bunch of garbage that is trying to fool me into paying for the tip, I am not going to bookmark it or share it. If I lose my mind and share it and I immediately get 500 emails telling me that when they go to the site they don't see the tip (because they didn't go through GOOG), I am goingto have a lot of egg on my face.
If I do the same search in Bing and I get stack overflow, I'm a happy man. How often does that have to happen before I bail on using GOOG?
I don't think of this as privileging Google users, I think of it as creating a nasty time bomb when users discover that they can't share or save their results.
Those outcomes after bookmark/shorten/share are inconvenient.
But are you more angry at ExEx or at Google? Most people in this thread have retaliated against ExEx, not Google.
And, are these frustrating outcomes inconvenient enough for you to actually switch away from Google? Or to do other things that help Google?
If instead you search again to access the answer or find an alternate source -- net win for Google!
If you are driven to use Google Web History, Google Bookmarks, Google Reader, or Google Buzz to bookmark/shorten/share -- net win for Google!
If initially including the 'time bomb' ExEx result, as decepulative as it was in the long run, prevented you from trying another service on your first search -- net win for Google!
By advantaging the use of Google search (and services) over all other link-discovery mechanisms, ExEx is doing Google a small service. The same paradox applies with the legions of SEO-pablum and Made-For-AdSense sites. Google doesn't want them if they totally destroy the user experience, but if they marginally force a few more search refinements, and result in a few longer sessions viewing more Google AdWords/AdSense, the net economic incentives are for
Google to tolerate them, and rationalize their existence.
I wonder if in the domain where we pay the price with our attention, Google search is a little like a 'Giffen Good'. That is, a good whose consumption goes up as it becomes more costly -- because there are no easy substitutes, and it depletes our overall budget so much that other expenditures are crowded-out.
Just remembered another salient point: it's not only ExEx creating these bookmark-broken, sharing-broken Google-favoring pages. It's also the Wall Street Journal and other major media sites.
And rather than that becoming a selling point for Bing -- "we'll show you fewer results, but at least they'll still work in a week" -- the idea that's gotten more attention is that Bing should outbid Google to get such preferential access itself. (For example, the rumors that Fox/Murdoch was discussing such a deal with Microsoft, and Mark Cuban's enthusiastic promotion of the idea: <http://blogmaverick.com/2009/11/22/bing-trying-to-get-exclus...)
Well, that's exactly the sort of cloaking EE used to do. Google bot saw the answers, but visitors were greeted with a page asking for a credit card. At some point, I imagine google threatened to delist them.
You ever happened to urgently need a fast solution to a problem, search on Google, click a link - and again you were on a page of ExpertsExchange, exactly describing your problem - but not giving an answer? Instead they tell you, you would have found it here if you paid? Never again. Ads gone, solution shown :-)
Well, this is the official answer of why EE is not excluded.
"Can Experts Exchange be excluded from search results?, May 19, 2009
It it possible to exclude Experts Exchange from search results?, Why are they ranked so high with such a spammy interface? Joshua Starr, IN
Answer by Matt Cutts: ... We aren't going to remove Experts Exchange because they don't violate our quality guidelines or at least they currently don't and that they don't cloak. Some people think that they do cloak, but if you're going to look at the cache page... the content is there. So, it's not as if they're showing different content to Googlebot than they are to users... However if you use Search Wiki, you can remove Experts Exchange from individual queries..."
Sadly Google seems to have dumped SearchWiki. I noticed last week that the "X" button (which removed a particular page from the resultset) is no longer there. You can only upvote, not downvote ... which is stupid. I used the "X"-to-remove far more (generally to remove spammy SEO garbage) than I used the upvote box.
Unless it was being gamed by the SEO crowd, I can't understand why Google killed that feature ... it was the best thing they'd added to the core Web Search in a long time, and was a big step towards a sort of Customized Search which I've always thought could be Google's killer app. With all the information they have about accountholders, it would make sense to customize results depending on who's searching. For some reason they seem to be opposed to per-user customization of results, though.
For this same reason, I have decided to completely boycott Experts Exchange. I never purposely choose links leading to them, and when I reach them, it is always by accident. You can often find answers by going down a few more results within Google. I am not against premium content or even limited content, but their practices seem underhanded to me.
It's interesting that the sum of their traffic is relatively constant.
That implies SO really is eating at their traffic specifically. But it also implies SO isn't encouraging new traffic, and that the general market for Q&A isn't growing.
I found it interesting that the sum actually isn't relatively constant. The sum is steadily declining from 1.89M in februari 2009 to 1.65M in februari 2010. Given the ongoing growth of the internet (and the population), the total traffic should have increased, making the shrinkage all the more interesting. I'm guessing there are either Asian sites eating away a substantial market share or that the measurement methodology of Compete has been changing.
My guess would be on their measurement methodology. The about page reads: "We have a diverse sample of 2,000,000+ U.S. Internet users that have given us permission to analyze the web pages they visit and ask them questions via surveys." That translates as sketchy toolbar/shareware installs and checkboxes that are checked by default.
And that means this stat likely does not reflect the usage habits of technically proficient users, because they are the least likely to have allowed those grayware installs.
Most of the drop occurs during the winter holidays, when people have less time to work. The biggest dip is reported for January and probably corresponds to numbers taken in December. That still leaves 12% decline between this February and last, though.
It just means that Google is getting better at serving correct A's for common Q's, and so there is less need for visiting specialized sites as these two.
The thing I hate about Experts Exchange is that it utterly hates users. Trying to use their site is an exercise in repeatedly irritated.
Stack Overflow on the other hand, is a delight, although I still find myself using Google to search their site, as I think their search engine stinks when you're trying to find answers ;)
Although to be fair, EE hasn't been the same since they inserted the hyphen into their URL ;)
If I recall Jeff and Joel, in one of their podcasts, said their ideal situation was that people would visit the site via Google. They acknowledged that they didn't think they could improve search beyond what Google offered and expected / intended for the overwhelming (I think they said it was something like 95%) number of vistors to be from Google.
Funny that SO now has more traffic than EE, but doesn't seem to be making (any?) money while EE is still raking in millions.
I guess what's even more interesting is that Experts Exchange was in this exact position some years ago. Everything was free, open, easy to find. Then they sought out VC money and started talking how to turn a profit. Fast forward a while and you have what you see now: an extremely profitable site with questionable morals.
Makes you wonder what's going to happen to SO after they get the VC funding they're looking for.
Is it really eating away at EE or is it just a huge growth in support questions for Rails, iPhone, CSS, jquery that SO has an advantage in? The top search term for EE is Microsoft Outlook, while the top (non brand) search term for SO is "from_tag rails." Seems like search demographics are a huge part of the relative growth differences.
I couldn't imagine a better competition. I am utterly elated, as a junior developer, to have Stack Overflow as a resource as well as to see it knocking at Expert Exchanges' door.
I'm sure there are external variables I'm not seeing but this graph makes it look as if SO's growth has all been at the expense of Experts Exchange. The total readership seems to have held steady at just north of 1.5M monthly for the last year.
What's interesting about these numbers is not that SO has finally surpassed EE... but that it has only just happened. Seriously, I'd assumed SO had beaten them into the ground a year ago!
I wonder what their respective profits and revenues are. If they were publicly traded companies, wolframalpha would be nice to use.
Also keep in mind that with SO, Spolsky and crew have proven out a highly successful platform that can be extended to almost any subject. SO makes money and the StackExchange platform makes money.
ExpertExchange seems like a forum with just a paywall. So on the other hand, I give props to anyone who can turn a plain vanilla web forum with zero envelope-pushing technology into a profitable business.
"SO makes money and the StackExchange platform makes money."
If StackOverflow was really profitable, they probably wouldn't have been messing around with Google Ads and Amazon book affiliate links. Those things make 0 money, even Jeff's own admission (http://bit.ly/bbIUuh). Those sponsored categories might be turning some cash, but I still doubt they're making as much profit as E-E, evil as they are.
Fair point. I'm sure SO brings in at least some revenue. Think of that as a subsidy to develop and prove the desirability of the platform, which I'm sure is/will be very lucrative for Spolsky.
The rule is, if you come from Google, the answer is hidden at the bottom of the page, behind a bunch of things that say you need to sign in. But if you don't come from Google, the answer is hidden unless you're a member, so you can't e-mail the URL with an answer around to pals, for example. It's a similar policy that the WSJ has for articles, built to keep the Google benefit while encouraging subscriptions.
They used to have a better paywall where Google's spider could see the results to index but if you went there - even from Google's cache you couldn't.
I suspect Google cracked down on this so they had to unblock the results. The block is in place for a few scientific journals, they must have worked out some deal with google to protect their content.
I am glad to see this. Experts exchange is an oldschool clunky website with a very boring IT look & feel. I hate it because I would like to transfer my wisdom to people but it is so hacker unfriendly with ads and free trials. Free trial for transferring my valuable experience? No.
one of the early stated goals of Stack Overflow was to be a better version of Experts Exchange. It looks like they are accomplishing that goal, in terms of users switching (which of course, the graph does not prove but does seem to suggest).
Thanks a lot, this was exactly what I have been looking for.
If I could ask, how mature would you rate yourself to be, in comparison to stackexchange? In, say, preventing gaming of the system, DoS prevention, etc.
I've always found that experts-exchange was really scammy. For a while they weren't so bad when you could view their otherwise login-protected data via google's cached content, but eventually they figured out a way around that. This always seemed to me to be a violation of Google's TOS.
