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StackOverflow.com vs.Experts-Exchange.com
- vital101 17y agoAnswers on top > Scrolling all the way to the bottom for answers.
- compay 17y agoBut only when you follow a Google search result link. If you bookmark it and come back, or follow any other link, then the result does not appear. Edit: I meant to say, the replies do not appear.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- dpritchett 17y agoI'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.
- 100k 17y agoIt's good to have an enemy. SO has been targeted at destroying Experts Exchange from the beginning.
- cmgarcia 17y agoI 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.
- hopeless 17y agoWhat'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!
- spolsky 17y agoWe did, by any reasonable measurement. Compete undercounts us ridiculously. Alexa and Quantcast showed us passing them months ago.
- dpritchett 17y agoCompete shows you passing them on visits 3-4 months ago. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/experts-exchange.com+stackoverflow.com/?metric=sess&months=12 http://siteanalytics.compete.com/experts-exchange.com+stacko...
- adelevie 17y agoHow do you know that Compete, Alexa, or Quantcast haven't undercounted Experts Exchange?
- jrockway 17y agoBecause their own site is clearly better, so any numbers that don't make that clear are wrong.
- JoachimSchipper 17y agoWell, it does make some sense to assume that the majority is right...
- figital 17y agoI 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.
- stusmith1977 17y agoYou 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).
- raganwald 17y agoI 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?
- patio11 17y agoGoogle 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.
- raganwald 17y agoThanks 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...
- adelevie 17y agoI 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.
- dustingetz 17y agofrom my understanding, its a fake paywall!
- adelevie 17y agoWhat do you mean?
- mjhnghfh 17y agoIf you scroll down past the adverts you can read the answers at the bottom.
- morisy 17y agoAn "obfuscation" wall, if you will. 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.
- mjhnghfh 17y agoThey 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.
- mootothemax 17y agoThe 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 ;)
- tseabrooks 17y agoIf 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.
- smartbear 17y agoIt'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.
- dpritchett 17y agoSO has 25% more visits per visitor. That says good things about the site's stickiness and interaction. I would've expected the discrepancy to be even larger but I suppose there are people who voluntarily use EE.
- Confusion 17y agoI 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.
- alanstorm 17y agoMy 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.
- iron_ball 17y agoAnd 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.
- aaronbrethorst 17y ago
- audiodude 17y agoExperts 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.
- mjhnghfh 17y ago"search term -site:experts-exchange.com"
- j2d2 17y agoYes!
- GrandMasterBirt 17y agoI 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.
- devicenull 17y agoThe CustomizeGoogle FF extension lets you do this.
- bhseo 17y agohttp://www.optimizegoogle.com/ http://www.optimizegoogle.com/ Since the CustomizeGoogle extension is no longer updated, I suggest trying the new OptimizeGoogle extension that has taken over the former's responsibilities. It really is one of my favourites. You can filter URLs from the results. Flushes the Google cookie but remembers my settings. I recommend it to everyone that uses Google.
- colinprince 17y ago
- solutionyogi 17y agoFor me, Google index cheating is not that big of a deal. The fact is, Experts-Exchange.com sucks. Even though it mainly targets programming questions, it doesn't even provide syntax highlighting for the code! And now they added a BIG banner at the bottom to encourage you to sign up. Check this question: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=c%23+generics+experts+exchange&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=c%23+generics+exper... [Giving Google link so that you can actually see the answer.] There is no way to directly link to a particular answer. And answers have those 'text-hover-ads' popup, I hate them. StackOverflow is infinitely superior and I am not surprised that they are destroying Experts-Exchange. Good riddance.
- grogers 17y agohaha, there is a banner ad: "Tired of scrolling?"
- mjhnghfh 17y agoStackoverflow vs codeproject would be more interesting. Although I use SO daily and have 20k rep, CodeProject is still better for posting, supporting and asking question on specific code. It would be a shame if SO destroyed CodeProject. Especially for anyone stuck on MFC it's vital.
- snewe 17y agoIs 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.
- dogas 17y agoAlthough 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.
- almost 17y agoI 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.
- ptomato 17y agoYes, but Alexa says the same thing and has for a while.
- almost 17y agoSo Alex is correlated with Compete.com in this case. I'm still not convinced they represent actual reality though. But I guess that is a bit more convincing than just the one.
- sesqu 17y agoI really wouldn't trust Alexa on that either. As far as I know, their sole source of data is a toolbar.
- alanstorm 17y agoTraffic reporting companies are, more or less, the credit ratings agencies of the web. Their numbers tell you something, but never what they claim to.
- stevenp 17y agoOhhhhhhh, now I get it! I always thought it was "Expert Sex Change"!
- jrockway 17y ago"s-ex" is an odd way to spell sex. Hint: the non-hyphenated domain-name is not them.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- edd 17y agoGoogle's take on the situation: http://trends.google.com/websites?q=stackoverflow.com,+experts-exchange.com http://trends.google.com/websites?q=stackoverflow.com,+exper...
- jrockway 17y agoLooks like everyone took a nice end-of-year vacation from both sites.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- csomar 17y agoI wonder what this site (http://www.best-family-photography-tips.com/ http://www.best-family-photography-tips.com/) do in Experts-Exchange top referral sites.
- verdant 17y agoone 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).
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoAnd that's among users who couldn't figure out how not to add a Compete.com toolbar to their browsers.
- Aegean 17y agoI 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.
- papachito 17y agoShameless plug, I built an open source version of stackexchange with some friends: http://shapado.com http://shapado.com
- proee 17y agoNice... How many hours did it take you to make that?
- sundarurfriend 17y agoThanks 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.
- smackfu 17y agoStackOverflow still generally doesn't come up in my Google searches, maybe because the technical stuff I work on isn't the same as their audience. For instance, compare the number of DB2 questions to the number of MySql questions: 363 vs. 14567 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/db2 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/db2 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/mysql http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/mysql Experts-Exchange and various other sites of that ilk sadly have much better coverage of some topics.
- kneath 17y agoFunny 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.
- Znupi 17y agogo go stackoverflow!
- dnsworks 17y agoI'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.