4 ms·

That's not really fair. At one time, cloaking data was a good way to get found and still put up a pay wall. They built a business around being able to do this

• jawns 15y ago
  "At one time, cloaking data was a good way to get found and still put up a pay wall." It was good for the business maybe, but never -- not then and not now -- good for the user.
  • dpcan 15y ago
    Nobody EVER said it had to be. They had data. It was GOOD data, and they wanted to be paid for it, but they had to tell Google they had it so people could find it. It's how advertising works. Look what we have! Come buy it.
    • mrgoldenbrown 15y ago
      Advertising is saying "free ice cream this weekend at EE's ice cream shop". What EE does though is say "free ice cream" in their ad on tv, and then inform customers at the cash register that the ice cream is only free if you purchase a $50 plastic spoon as well.
      • qeorge 15y ago
        Not exactly. I don't recall Experts Exchange ever implying their data was free. It was more like: "You know that flavor you desperately need? We've got it, and we'll show you the box, but if you want to taste it you'll have to pay." Don't get me wrong - I hated EE and I'm glad to see them gone from Google, but I don't think they implied their content was free.
        • zem 15y ago
          yes, but to extend the metaphor, it's as though they offered a reporter free icecream and tricked him into writing a piece about it in the paper, rather than purchasing an ad.
        • mrgoldenbrown 15y ago
          When they show the content to free for google, that implies to me that the content is not behind a paywall. Showing different things to Google and to me is deceptive. It would be like a manufacturer someone finding out where Consumer Reports buys their test cars, and sending special high quality cars there, while selling the rest of us normal crappy cars.
    • InclinedPlane 15y ago
      Uh. No. If they wanted advertising they could have bought google adwords and pointed it to the appropriate landing pages to buy the answers. If they want free advertising, well TANSTAAFL.
    • edanm 15y ago
      Downvotes are for comments that don't belong on the site because they don't add anything to the discussion. I personally have found this discussion very interesting. Dpcan should not be downvoted just for making an unpopular argument. In fact, dpcan has managed to convince me that he's right. When I search for the title of a book, and I get to see a preview of a few pages, it is a form of advertising. It's not "wrong" or "mischievous" or "evil" or any other negative, it's just how advertising works. The reason you are all upset is because that's not how Search Engines, in particular, worked. With book previews on Amazon, we're used to it. What EE did was try a new tactic, built for the web, to advertise their product. Of course we didn't like it - when has anyone ever liked paying for something? Nowadays, what they do has been ruled to be wrong. The "rules of the game", as defined by Google (the authority here, apparently), say that they aren't allowed to do that. They find "tricky" ways of doing it, which sucks. But remember, these rules are being written live - you can't hold EE at fault for trying to "hack" a system, and you definitely can't fault them for not living up to rules that never existed.
      • talmand 15y ago
        I agree, I don't understand the down voting on dpcan. There seems to be two different complaints about EE. 1. They show data to Google but hide it from visitors unless they pay. Personally I see nothing wrong with this as explained by edanm. They are a business and this is their business model. They use a search engine as a form of free advertisement. If the search engines didn't have a problem with this then I don't understand why potential visitors should. If you don't like having to pay for the content then go elsewhere. Having results in the search engine that have data behind a paywall is the problem of the search engine, not the site that has the paywall. The data is still relevant even though you can't see it immediately on clicking the link. 2. They show one set of data to search engines but show a different set to visitors. To me, this is a no-no as long as they are actually doing this in the described manner. If by showing different data is because of the paywall and they do match up after you pay, then I see no problem. But in the end if they do not match then there's a problem and I would hope that the search engines would discourage this type of thing. I think people need to be more clear on what exactly they are complaining about. Plus, as edanm states, you shouldn't down vote someone simply because the statement is unpopular yet relevant to the topic.
• georgemcbay 15y ago
  I strongly disagree that cloaking behind-paywall pages is ever "good". If I'm searching for a specific term, I want to see pages that are relevant to that term when I click the links, not pages that ask for my credit card and that may or may not (probably not) show me a relevant page after I've been charged. Experts Exchange was a fairly decent site very long ago, but it sucks horribly now and has for years and has nobody to blame for their downfall but their own deceptive practices and lack of vision in terms of alternate revenue models. I'm glad Stack Overflow is totally eating their lunch. Good riddance.
  • dpcan 15y ago
    I totally agree. Stack Overflow is awesome and a great alternative to EE. When I searched for a programming answer and EE came up, most times the questions and answers were relevant. I never opted to pay for the service, and I stopped clicking the links to EE because I didn't want to pay. However, that didn't mean they didn't have the relevant answer, and I just had to pay for it if I wanted it. I don't find this deceptive, just a form of advertising.
• joebadmo 15y ago
  That's still deception. Seems obvious to me that the reason search engines would penalize sites that put up real data behind firewalls is because users don't want to see them in their search results. To show search engines different data to circumvent this is deceptive.
  • dpcan 15y ago
    But the data IS there. That is not deceptive. Are you saying that if your content is in Google's database it's required to be free? As a site owner, I have the right to decide whether or not my data is available for free, but it is there, and you should know it's there, so I have to somehow get found in search engines. Think of it this way. You search for an image in Google - you are presented with sites that sell licenses to stock photos. Is this any different?
    • joebadmo 15y ago
      Showing different things to search engines and users is deceptive. You're misrepresenting yourself to the search engine. I want search engines to penalize sites that put content behind firewalls, because those sites are less relevant to me. If the site is good enough to overcome that penalty because the content is so good that it gets enough google juice anyway, awesome. But they should still be penalized for hiding stuff behind the paywall. It's not a moral judgment on paywalling content, it's a practical one. As a search engine user, I don't want Google to show me paywall stuff unless it's really, really good. So Google is making the appropriate ranking by penalizing paywalled content. But if you trick Google by showing googlebot something that you don't show users, that's obviously deceptive. Which I will make a moral judgment on.
• ams6110 15y ago
  The only part of EE I don't care for is that they want us to pay for data they didn't create In theory they provide a service that has value, that is a platform where questions can get answered. Just because they didn't pay the "experts" doesn't mean their overall concept is not worth paying for. Now, I'm not saying that their implementation is worth paying for, I just don't buy the idea that because they didn't pay for their data it's wrong for them to charge for their service.