Google, and the other search engines, should develop a standard that allows a page to tell the search engine if it does this kind of thing. More generally, it should be able to tell the search engine which of these categories the page falls under:
• Freely readable with no need to register. E.g., Stack Exchange.
• Site requires login, but accounts are generally free. E.g., Quora.
• Site requires login, accounts are not necessarily free. E.g., Wall Street Journal.
• Per article fee. E.g., many scientific journals.
• Content not actually available online. E.g., many hits on Google Books, where they have excerpts of the book online so you can find it via search, but to actually get the full content you have to by the physical book.
Users could then choose to exclude some categories from their search results, or to have some shown ahead of others.
How could google index a page if the page requires an account to view? I'm pretty sure googlebot has no such account. Surely such pages are invisible to google.
Somewhat related, the hidden answers on Quora are always visible/indexable in the page source (on occasion that's how I've read answers without signing in and without downloading an extension)
Many forums give read-only access to Google and other search engines so that they can be indexed without requiring an account, sometimes by UA or IP range.
You could just crowd source it. When you quickly back out of a page from Google, it offers to "Block all Pages from somedomain.com". This could easily be repurposed to also garner additional details about the site.
To be honest, my goal with this extension was to raise awareness about Quora obfuscating answers for anonymous visitors ala Experts Exchange.
Most contributors on Quora don't know that their content is being presented this way. (According to Quora's ToS, the submitter's content is their own.)
Yeah but it's one of those subtle privacy invasions that you have to realize has occurred before you can opt out, and most people will never see the "X viewed this" link tucked away at the bottom of the page.
There's actually a lot of really great, interesting content on Quora. I wish I could stop clicking, but when I see them in search results or get their emails, I know that whatever content is on the other side is likely to be good. I actually have a Quora account, too, but I don't understand why I need to log in to read something. Lately my strategy has just been to edit the CSS in the inspector.
This isn't to say I like Quora. I can't wait for someone to come along and fucking destroy them, and take their excellent userbase with them.
I don't understand why any websites do things like this. Yesterday I tried visiting a link someone had tweeted for fab.com, only to find I had to sign up before I could view it[0]. Does this technique actually work for building a customer base? It actively drives me away, that's for sure.
[0] For fob's sake, you can't even view their Contact Us page without signing up: http://fab.com/contact-us/
Same situation for other sites like that (Gilt Groupe, The Clymb, etc.). Even as a registered user, if I'm on a new device (especially mobile) and I click on a link through an email and I can't see those products, I'm not going to log in to buy. I've played that game countless times and I truly don't understand it. There's nothing "exclusive" about it. If you don't have an account, that's as exclusive as it gets, but at least show me what I'm missing.
The extension won't install for me but it is easy enough to follow his link to the user script that inspired 80% of the extension and just use that. Also easy enough to add the missing 20% as well. Great idea. I had noticed last week just how easy it was to manipulate the CSS on Quora to do this. Glad some people took the time to roll something up for the rest of us. I seem to be finding myself linked here more recently. :/
Probably that I'm using RockMelt and not Chrome. I don't know enough about extensions to even make a guess at why some work in RockMelt and some don't.
Ah, so you only get those blurred answers if you come from a search engine. That's the first time I see it in action. I have javascript disabled so I get an opaque block over the answer.
But why? Genuine question. What has quora done that is block worthy? Matt cuts made a video on google webmasters channel on why expertexchangd is not blocked. I am on phone so cant paste link. You should check it out.
It's on the same level as putting content on the page in a 1pt white-on-white font. Sure, the content is technically there, but humans can't read it.
Expert sex change at least has the content on the page, unadulterated, after you scroll past a bunch of ad blocks. Totally different from what Quora does.
I haven't been directed to expert sex change in sometime, perhaps because of Stack Overflow, but unless they've changed, expert sex change is deceptive, they don't say "real answers below ads", they provide answers that make it look as though you need to register, then the provide a crap ton of ads then the real answers. I'd say they are somewhat different from Quora, but not necessarily any less deceptive. I'd say they are gaming Google.
EE used to hide the actual answers until you signed up, but it hurt their SEO. (I think there was a temporary scandal where they showed the Googlebot different pages but it got fixed.)
• Freely readable with no need to register. E.g., Stack Exchange.
• Site requires login, but accounts are generally free. E.g., Quora.
• Site requires login, accounts are not necessarily free. E.g., Wall Street Journal.
• Per article fee. E.g., many scientific journals.
• Content not actually available online. E.g., many hits on Google Books, where they have excerpts of the book online so you can find it via search, but to actually get the full content you have to by the physical book.
Users could then choose to exclude some categories from their search results, or to have some shown ahead of others.