StackOverflow.com vs.Experts-Exchange.com
siteanalytics.compete.com
siteanalytics.compete.com
They do. -site:experts-exchange.com
To avoid typing that into all the search boxes, just modify the query string for google that you use to search for with the search box/keyword for searching in the url bar. I have that and a couple of dozen others in the "g" keyword in my url bar.
However, I see little point in that -- searching from the location bar just seems easier to me. CTRL-t gets you a new tab with focus in the location bar from anywhere, and I don't have to wait for any page to load to type in the query. Even if google is fast, it's still not as fast.
Also, you can set up other easy searches. For example, stuff I have used in the past 2 hours:
- gis (google image search)
- gfi (google finance)
- listof (google I feel lucky, site:wikipedia.org with search string "list of %s")
Yes, I realize their tactics are nasty, but for all those answers to simply disappear from the web would be a shame.
Ideal would be for Stack Overflow to buy them out and import all their existing content.
And what's to say Stack Overflow won't become like EE some day, and start holding answers hostage? EE wasn't always this way you know... [edit: I realize this is a completely different line of thinking -- it just popped into my head]
Joel and Jeff have explicitly tackled that issue in the podcast, with reference to IMDB and CDDB as well as "the hyphen site". All the user generated content on Stack Overflow is licensed under cc-wiki and available as an anonymised data dump. http://bit.ly/cGWxT5
It's not impossible but they can't just make off with the data in the way that CDDB did.
(Now, if you want to talk about a company abusing the community ... look at Yelp.)
At worst they could only hold new answers hostage. All of the existing questions and answers, every single one of them, is licensed under cc-wiki and is made available to the public via data dumps on bittorrent. You can quite literally download all of the question and answer data for all of Stack Overflow, if they turn evil you can host your own site with all of the old data, or someone else could. The latest data dump was 11 days ago: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/category/cc-wiki-dump/
SO is better for finding iPhone or C# related answers.
Not to say that I'd ever pay for EX, but it obviously has its uses...
The fact is that the only reason they rank highly at all is by cheating google's indexer and using a cheap psychological trick. Their business model is naiveté. Once you point it out to their customer base, they will quit the service.
Really? None for Yahoo! Answers? :)
I have keyword searches setup in Firefox for StackOverflow, ServerFault, and SuperUser, but I hated getting blog and meta results in my StackOverflow searches. This will help in a big way.
Much appreciated!
compete reported a sharp decline of unique visitors to our site in nov and dec, even though those were are best months ever for both traffic and business (according to google analytics, and our bank acocunt). Of course there's nothing we can really do about it. What can you do? Complain? Write a flame blog post? Compete's numbers are not solid, they are all estimated from some crazy algorithm. It would be nice to just brush it off, but when potential customers are looking at compete and thinking we are tanking, it's bad news.
But I guess that is a bit more convincing than just the one.
Experts Exchange plays right on the edge of what their policies allow, but previously they have backed off in response to feedback, and nixing them would cost Google millions of searches in a key influencer demographic getting nothing.
It's not like EE pages are the only result for searches...
Think like a junior developer for writing queries needed to write Big Freaking Enterprise backend software. For example, the first thing that popped into my head for a query likely to generate an EE result was [sort combobox java] -- it is something that you'll actually have to do for Big Freaking Enterprise development, it uses an "unsexy" programming language, and the phrasing is just off enough that people who know what they're talking about wouldn't phrase their pages that way.
And sure enough, EE wins. See http://www.pastie.org/881242 for the other results with my annotations.
SO is - better open model, better interface, but lacks volume especially in some areas, and lacks trolling-question controls (i.e. "which language is better" type of million-answer threads). But it will mature, I find it interesting enough to contribute.
The kind of cloaking ExpertsExchange is doing privileges Google's crawler and users, giving Google an advantage over competitors. What would motivate Google to punish such a site?
If I do the same search in Bing and I get stack overflow, I'm a happy man. How often does that have to happen before I bail on using GOOG?
I don't think of this as privileging Google users, I think of it as creating a nasty time bomb when users discover that they can't share or save their results.
But are you more angry at ExEx or at Google? Most people in this thread have retaliated against ExEx, not Google.
And, are these frustrating outcomes inconvenient enough for you to actually switch away from Google? Or to do other things that help Google?
If instead you search again to access the answer or find an alternate source -- net win for Google!
If you are driven to use Google Web History, Google Bookmarks, Google Reader, or Google Buzz to bookmark/shorten/share -- net win for Google!
If initially including the 'time bomb' ExEx result, as decepulative as it was in the long run, prevented you from trying another service on your first search -- net win for Google!
By advantaging the use of Google search (and services) over all other link-discovery mechanisms, ExEx is doing Google a small service. The same paradox applies with the legions of SEO-pablum and Made-For-AdSense sites. Google doesn't want them if they totally destroy the user experience, but if they marginally force a few more search refinements, and result in a few longer sessions viewing more Google AdWords/AdSense, the net economic incentives are for Google to tolerate them, and rationalize their existence.
I wonder if in the domain where we pay the price with our attention, Google search is a little like a 'Giffen Good'. That is, a good whose consumption goes up as it becomes more costly -- because there are no easy substitutes, and it depletes our overall budget so much that other expenditures are crowded-out.
And rather than that becoming a selling point for Bing -- "we'll show you fewer results, but at least they'll still work in a week" -- the idea that's gotten more attention is that Bing should outbid Google to get such preferential access itself. (For example, the rumors that Fox/Murdoch was discussing such a deal with Microsoft, and Mark Cuban's enthusiastic promotion of the idea: <http://blogmaverick.com/2009/11/22/bing-trying-to-get-exclus...)
You ever happened to urgently need a fast solution to a problem, search on Google, click a link - and again you were on a page of ExpertsExchange, exactly describing your problem - but not giving an answer? Instead they tell you, you would have found it here if you paid? Never again. Ads gone, solution shown :-)
"Can Experts Exchange be excluded from search results?, May 19, 2009
It it possible to exclude Experts Exchange from search results?, Why are they ranked so high with such a spammy interface? Joshua Starr, IN
Answer by Matt Cutts: ... We aren't going to remove Experts Exchange because they don't violate our quality guidelines or at least they currently don't and that they don't cloak. Some people think that they do cloak, but if you're going to look at the cache page... the content is there. So, it's not as if they're showing different content to Googlebot than they are to users... However if you use Search Wiki, you can remove Experts Exchange from individual queries..."
Unless it was being gamed by the SEO crowd, I can't understand why Google killed that feature ... it was the best thing they'd added to the core Web Search in a long time, and was a big step towards a sort of Customized Search which I've always thought could be Google's killer app. With all the information they have about accountholders, it would make sense to customize results depending on who's searching. For some reason they seem to be opposed to per-user customization of results, though.
That implies SO really is eating at their traffic specifically. But it also implies SO isn't encouraging new traffic, and that the general market for Q&A isn't growing.
This is my experience, anyway.
I would've expected the discrepancy to be even larger but I suppose there are people who voluntarily use EE.
The fact is, Experts-Exchange.com sucks.
Even though it mainly targets programming questions, it doesn't even provide syntax highlighting for the code!
And now they added a BIG banner at the bottom to encourage you to sign up.
Check this question:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=c%23+generics+exper...
[Giving Google link so that you can actually see the answer.]
There is no way to directly link to a particular answer.
And answers have those 'text-hover-ads' popup, I hate them.
StackOverflow is infinitely superior and I am not surprised that they are destroying Experts-Exchange. Good riddance.
Stack Overflow on the other hand, is a delight, although I still find myself using Google to search their site, as I think their search engine stinks when you're trying to find answers ;)
Although to be fair, EE hasn't been the same since they inserted the hyphen into their URL ;)
I guess what's even more interesting is that Experts Exchange was in this exact position some years ago. Everything was free, open, easy to find. Then they sought out VC money and started talking how to turn a profit. Fast forward a while and you have what you see now: an extremely profitable site with questionable morals.
Makes you wonder what's going to happen to SO after they get the VC funding they're looking for.
For instance, compare the number of DB2 questions to the number of MySql questions: 363 vs. 14567
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/db2 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/mysql
Experts-Exchange and various other sites of that ilk sadly have much better coverage of some topics.
Edit: I meant to say, the replies do not appear.
Although I use SO daily and have 20k rep, CodeProject is still better for posting, supporting and asking question on specific code.
It would be a shame if SO destroyed CodeProject. Especially for anyone stuck on MFC it's vital.
Also keep in mind that with SO, Spolsky and crew have proven out a highly successful platform that can be extended to almost any subject. SO makes money and the StackExchange platform makes money.
ExpertExchange seems like a forum with just a paywall. So on the other hand, I give props to anyone who can turn a plain vanilla web forum with zero envelope-pushing technology into a profitable business.
If StackOverflow was really profitable, they probably wouldn't have been messing around with Google Ads and Amazon book affiliate links. Those things make 0 money, even Jeff's own admission (http://bit.ly/bbIUuh). Those sponsored categories might be turning some cash, but I still doubt they're making as much profit as E-E, evil as they are.
The rule is, if you come from Google, the answer is hidden at the bottom of the page, behind a bunch of things that say you need to sign in. But if you don't come from Google, the answer is hidden unless you're a member, so you can't e-mail the URL with an answer around to pals, for example. It's a similar policy that the WSJ has for articles, built to keep the Google benefit while encouraging subscriptions.
I suspect Google cracked down on this so they had to unblock the results. The block is in place for a few scientific journals, they must have worked out some deal with google to protect their content.
If I could ask, how mature would you rate yourself to be, in comparison to stackexchange? In, say, preventing gaming of the system, DoS prevention, etc.