You can only scroll down if visiting from Google. Copying the URL and pasting it into your browser returns a page without the answer. I'm suprised Google didn't exclude them years ago. (Apologies if that's what you meant).
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.