EaterJoe
01-08-2007, 02:58 PM
hen you search for something technical on the internet, quite often you'll see a search listing with 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.
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.