
The power of Google: how the Panda update hit Experts Exchange - bensummers
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/5063-the-power-of-google-how-the-panda-update-hit-experts-exchange.html
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reduxredacted
I'm happy with the reduction in Experts Exchange content in my search (I won't
get into that at the moment, just to say that I usually find better quality
content on other sites).

Unfortunately, I still run into a myriad of copy/paste sites, which when
compared against Exerpts Exchange, are far worse, and Google's UI has made it
less simple to ban the sites. I've had to manually block "unifiedpeople.ru",
"mvp.itcommunity.ru", "boardreader.com" and "efreedom.com" in order to clean
up search results related to topics I'm regularly seeking answers. They
generally copy/paste from a variety of forums (and maybe even legally so), but
they present a less up-to-date version than the site they're copying and often
the code highlighting and other formatting is completely stripped rendering a
very difficult to read result. Yet they often rank higher than that from which
they copied.

The sites are marginally useful and were a problem before and after Panda.
Google, being in a very powerful position, does have a lot of control over
things like this, however, they also are going to be the most targetted. I've
found, in some cases, their closest competitor (the one that used to be very
blue) occasionally provides cleaner results, especially if the query involves
their own products--a circumstance that was not always the case.

~~~
sunchild
'Excerpts Exchange" is pretty much dead-on.

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jawns
I'm taking a page from Experts Exchange:

The comment that originally occupied this space is now behind a paywall (or,
if you want to get technical, it's buried down further in the thread, and you
now have to scroll through a bunch of other stuff to find it).

It begins with "Experts Exchange currently displays ..."

That's right, I've capitalized on the Hacker News "comment juice" my original
comment received and the above-the-fold real estate it garnered, effectively
"cloaking" my original answer.

Annoying, isn't it?

~~~
jawns
Experts Exchange currently displays its answers for free at the very bottom of
its pages, but it misleads visitors into thinking that they have to pay for
access. Unless you scroll through about eight pages' worth of filler, you
would never know that the answers are there. And EE would love for them not to
be there, but search engines won't index them otherwise.

That's actually an improvement from some of their earlier tactics, which
involved cloaking (serving one version of the site -- with the answers -- to
search engines and a different version to everyone else). The only reason
they're not still cloaking is because search engines have gotten wise to their
methods and won't tolerate it.

In short, Experts Exchange is willing to mislead people and search engines in
any way that it can get away with. So, at least in EE's case, the fact that
Google has tightened the screws is great.

(I should mention that I understand EE is a business and is trying to make a
profit -- but profiting from deception is what really riles me.)

~~~
Too
> Experts Exchange currently displays its answers for free at the very bottom
> of its pages, but it misleads visitors into thinking that they have to pay
> for access.

Only if you reach the site with a google.com referrer. Without referrer
there's no answers at the bottom.

~~~
astrodust
So basically "boo hoo" that they're not getting any rank.

Stack Overflow is a business too, but it's one worth supporting.

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vidarh
I agree with him that Google's power is worrying to some extent, but with
respect to Experts Exchange: Good riddance.

Their horrible faux pay-wall really deserve to be ranked down hard.

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Matt_Cutts
One of the signals that we've said that we use in the Panda algorithm that
launched in April is how many users blocked a particular site.

A new launch last week is that you can now import blocked sites from Chrome
into Google.com. That way your blocked sites will work wherever you sign in.
More info: [http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/10/export-your-
sites-b...](http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/10/export-your-sites-
blocklist-from-chrome.html)

~~~
tomjen3
That reminds me, have you removed the blocking function or does it only work
in Chrome?

I tried to find a manual for a particular dishwasher today. Holy crap was the
search results useless. With the exception of a site which didn't load and one
which was a list of people who wanted to know if anybody else had the manual
all other results of the three first pages where made for adsense sites or
sites designed to harvest email address.

Which would have been one thing, but not one of them had the damn manual (one
tried to suggest the manual for a Macbook air!?).

So it seems you still have a long way to go with Panda.

But the reason I ask is that I couldn't figure out how to ban those sites (I
was using my iPad at the time).

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Maxious
For me, it works such that you go to a crappy site, navigate backwards to the
search results and then a link "- Block all crappysite.com results" appears.
It also mentions you need to be "signed in to search".

~~~
pygy_
It would be nice if it also worked when you open a site in a tab too.

~~~
1880
You can directly block sites here: <http://www.google.com/reviews/t>

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garyrichardson
I don't think it has anything to do with Googles algorithm. Over the years,
I've had various browser plugins to hide EE results from my searches. Various
upgrades meant I had to find new plugins every 10 months or so.

Now it's easy for everyone. I hit the 'remove Experts Exchange from search
results' button the first time I saw it.

I hope Google is using remove from search results as a signal in their
ranking. I think it's a fair way to weight.

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chadgeidel
I hope Google looks at "remove from search results" but I hope they don't
allow that button to remove the results from the official ranking. That's
easier to game than PageRank was.

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dendory
HAH! That was my first reaction to this. I _hated_ doing a search and ending
up on that site, and they owned a lot of page 1 results for many keywords. I
cringed every time I would realize I had ended up on that site, could see the
clearly user-provided questions, and then the annoying way they hid the
answers and begged for money. If that's the result of Panda, Google gets a big
cheer from me.

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dlikhten
The #1 discussion on google for filtering websites was basically "How do I
stop experts-exchange from appearing in my results?"

However this is what the antitrust hearings were about, its scary how
trafficers of information control perception of the world.

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Achshar
really stop using alexa. <http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/29/anti-web-
analytics/>

~~~
skanuj
Really stop reading Techcrunch :)

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dendory
No he's actually right, Alexa provides unbelievably bad results, completely
irrelevant to anyone.

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TeMPOraL
Could someone explain to me why people even _consider_ results collected via
third-party browser toolbar to be relevant in any way[1]? I mean... I don't
remember ever seeing anyone in IT with a browser toolbar, and I remove them on
the spot from my non-IT friends' browsers. Call it selection bias, but I think
that most of the time someone has a toolbar of this type is when one's IT
friends haven't have time to get to ones computer and remove it.

[1] - this is a serious question that bothers me; I can't see how this kind of
selection gives any kind of representative sample.

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Haplo
I don't understand why something either has to be totally perfect information
or totally useless.

Yes, Alexa information is pretty bad. Yes, it is easily faked. Yes, it isn't
representative. Yes, browser toolbar usage is probably declining.

However, that doesn't mean that Alexa information cannot be used as an
indication of big traffic trends considering there is a difference between
absolute traffic levels and relative changes in traffic levels.

To give a different example. Let's say that you have a website with decent
traffic levels and you collect browser usage statistics (e.g. 50% IE, 40% FF,
10% Chrome). Of course those are not representative for global browser usage.
But if Chrome usage doubles for that group, it can be used as an indication
for a trend in global browser usage.

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nhebb
Here's my recent experience doing programming related searches:

\- Perform multiple keyword search on Google for esoteric topic.

\- Get a page of results that don't include all keywords (remember, can't use
'+' anymore).

\- Switch to Bing and perform search.

\- Get page of relevant results, but EE is near top of list.

I can't win either way. :(

~~~
DanBC
Old: +apples +oranges New: "apples" "oranges"

Google do a remarkable job at accurately guessing what most people want from a
bunch of search terms. It's not always right, but still, it is impressive.

Or try DuckDuckGo.

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pbhjpbhj
Way way back the reason Google succeeded over other SE for me was that they
required all terms and that they made sure relevancy by checking that the
terms were used in proper context on the page (eg not stuffed, not font-color
hidden, etc.).

Now, it seems I can't do a straight search, even quoted text returns results
that don't contain the string I'm looking for it's highly frustrating.

It must be working for others but when I need to use Google for anything
serious now (rather than a general query) it is a lot harder to get it to
return good results at the top of the SERPs.

The worst are the 1st-result-has-none-of-your-keywords type queries. Aagh! At
least they used to placate you with "pages pointing to this result use that
keyword".

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DanBC
To me the worst was when Google would just silently drop a search term. I was
getting a page of hits with none of them having one of my terms anywhere.

Google really needs to give a secret power user page, where there are no word
substitutions or dropping.

But, like I say, that's not most people. For most people the fact that Google
can search for C++ or can tell the difference between some words or can
include useful alternates for search terms is fantastic.

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edcrfv
I don't think the Panda update got it right with respect to the duplicate
content problem though. I still see a bunch of StackOverflow content scrapers
rank as high as StackOverflow and basically link back to StackOverflow. To the
same post that is ranked number 1 for that particular query. Don't have
examples right away - checking my history for those instances

One site I can remember is bigresource.com which is an aggregator of sorts, it
seems

The larger problem being, sites with duplicate content still rank as high as
the original.

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ChuckMcM
This is an excellent set of comments, they go all over the map from 'their
evil' to 'its just business' to 'I miss them'.

My feeling is that Experts Exchange is just one of a number of new enterprises
for which they are trying to price the value of information. The marginal cost
of providing the same information to a second, third, or 10,000th question
seeker is the same (and quite small) and the value of that information varies
between seekers as does the value of time. So we see a variety of strategies
for pricing that value.

The reference market in general seems to be a candidate for this sort of
disruption, and while many found EE distasteful my understanding is that Joel
_started_ StackOverflow because he valued the information in EE but found the
pricing (in terms of crap he had to wade through) extortionate. So he took the
concept one step forward.

No doubt someone will learn from his experience and take it further still.

~~~
Eric_Peterson
New? EE started in 1996. If anyone's a copycat, it's SO, and they weren't even
the first.

EE went the venture capital route in the last century, and did exactly what SO
is doing now: burning through money trying to build eyeballs with no business
plan other than taking venture capital money. It failed then, and it will fail
now because the revenue stream doesn't support the increased costs.

EE tried the advertising model in the early 2000s: get lots of eyes, sell ads
and pay the bills with that. It failed then, and it will fail now; only a few
companies have sufficient traffic to be profitable (Google and Facebook lead
the list, but everyone else needs some other revenue, or needs to share
content (like the NYTimes does) to help offset costs.

The only business model that works AND SCALES is to charge for services
rendered, like your cable company does. like your ISP does and like your
plumber does.

Did EE implement it in the best possible way? Nope. Instead it followed
Google's rules for SEO, and got punished for it because it was better at it
than anyone else. So it's rebuilding itself: <http://beta.experts-
exchange.com> . Did its members like it? Nope, but that didn't stop the
company from doing it, and now they're listening to their members more because
it turns out the members' warnings were right -- because they've been there
before.

When SO starts putting all kinds of ads in your face and you start complaining
like frightened banshees and nothing happens, you can cash in your reputation
points and find another site that will have the same magic bullet SO does.
When Quora starts tracking every little thing you do to "personalize the
experience" just remember that its roots are in Facebook -- and the goal is to
turn you into the product, because that's what advertising based sites do;
they can't sell ads without it.

EE is honest. You're not the product; you're the customer, even if --
especially if -- you're the one answering questions.

------
dicroce
If you don't want Google to have that power, don't use their search engine.

Personally, I like seeing expert sex change less...

~~~
dasil003
Won't someone please think of the transsexuals?

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rjd
I'm a big outposken critic of Google, I've disliked them for a long time. But
IMO I see no wrong here. If your business relies on Google to survive you
don't have a good business, you need to do some introspection and reevaluate
your business.

The update was beneficial to the interest of Google users. Those users aren't
forced to use Google.

And even though Google is huge and gets great boons because of its size, it is
also on a knife edge that could come toppling down because of a technological
break through, or advertising collapse. In all respects Facebook is big enough
to force that to happen (at least on an advertising front), but it could
always come from an unexpected area as well.

(granted that a technological breakthrough seems doubtful, but often thats
where the biggest surprises emerge)

~~~
jason1178
The update was beneficial to Google, not necessarily to its users. A lot of
Google properties (Demand Media, anyone?) that are clearly content farms
climbed up the rankings while good sites like Stack, DaniWeb, and
yes...Experts Exchange got nailed. In DaniWeb's case, she got nailed twice by
two different updates.

The problem here is Google is selling the ads and also determining the traffic
to the ads. It's too much in one place and ripe for abuse and the abuse seems
to be happening

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brc
The issue with Panda is that it tilts the playing field towards brands. This,
along with predictive searches and Google-owned companies filling out search
engine results, makes it much harder for newer sites to come in and gain
traffic.

While it's good that scraping sites get heavily hit, what's not so good is
that it will become very difficult for a future startup to gain a foothold in
an existing industry. The likes of stackoverflow overtaking EE in a short time
frame might become less in the future.

Much of Google search results is becoming useless with spam pollution, but at
the same time, they have to be careful they don't just solidify searches
around already 'knowns'. The true utility of search is turning up unexpected
good results from time to time.

~~~
a5seo
To your point, Demand Media now focuses primarily on putting their content on
brand sites and rev-sharing. See traveltips.usatoday.com, for example. There's
always someone working an angle to game Google.

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aeturnum
Though I worry about how much power Google wields, I think this is a bad
example. EE and its ilk are designed to rank as high as possible on Google
specifically. Their whole product was (more or less) SCO - if they could have
ranked higher without content, their pages would be empty aside from ads.
Their only purpose is to draw eyeballs to ads - if they didn't appear on
Google, no one would use them.

Ranking aggregation lower than original sources is a reasonable optimization
and the huge traffic impact was caused by the unusual entanglement with
Google's specific algorithmic implementation.

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mcherm
I disliked getting expert exchange In my list of search results. But that
doesn't change your main thesis that this is too much power for one company.

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jason1178
Experts Exchange is not scamming anyone: you, google, whomever. All they did
was play Google's game by Google's rules with first-click free and did it
better than anyone else for a long time. Now that Google has changed the
rules, EE will change too. There's a new site in beta testing and given the
Panda restrictions it will almost have to be a freemium model in order to
compete.

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uvTwitch
Well they're right about the new algorithm preferring high-quality sites; now
I no longer have to manually ignore results from expert sexchange anymore!

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gsmiley
Experts Exchange is responding with a new version of the site:

<http://beta.experts-exchange.com>

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wastedbrains
Experts Exchange is such a bad site, glad it was blocked.

