IIRC they changed their approach several times and I think for a while you wouldn't have access to the answer at all until they changed it to what you describe

IIRC they changed their approach several times and I think for a while you wouldn't have access to the answer at all until they changed it to what you describe (answer buried at the bottom of the page). I assume they settled on that format for the reason you mention, Google would have ended up removing them from their results if they kept cheating.