A recent post over at Techie Buzz explained how to access the answers of the Expert Exchange forum. Users who regularly search the Internet for solutions will eventually stumble upon that forum which on first glance provides answers to questions only to registered – meaning paying in this case – users.
Users who do not stop here and turn their back on the forum in frustration can actually access the answers quite easily without having to use third party services or changing their web browser’s configuration. What many users fail to realize that the answers are right in front of them, or more precisely right at the end of the scrollbar.
The Experts Exchange forum uses a very clever forum disguise to make visitors think that they can only access the answers if they signup as the banners and information directly below the question suggest. If they happen to scroll down further however they will realize that all the answers are located below that block.
There is one requirement though. Only visitors who are coming from search engines will be able to see the answers this way. There is however a quick and easy way of achieving this. Copying and pasting the title of the thread into a search engine form will do the trick. The posts at the Experts Exchange forum are usually well indexed and one of the first entries should be a direct link to that forum post.
A click on that link will open the Experts Exchange page with the question and its answers which are located below the middle block.
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Good tip. I use Google’s page ranking system to automatically delete Expert Exchange results. There is no way I would sign up to view their answers.
Most of the ones I’ve come across, at least recently you can just go to the bottom of the page where the answers are located.
I know I used to have to view them through the Google Cache, but not in the last six months or so.
Take a look at this greasemonkey script to remove all the junk from experts exchange and easy access to answers: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8614
It makes experts exchange actually useful.
Crap. I wish you hadn’t posted this. Every earlier method of seeing their answers (like the google cache trick), once published in blogs has been “fixed” (removed). I really hope they don’t remove this because I’ve found several good answers from their site. Having to pay for what amounts to a question and answer forum is stupid.
I use the greasemonkey script “Expert exchange filter”:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8614
it gets rid of all the junk between question and answer!
It is very old trick, I’ve been using this form very long time.
I’ve been doing this for years, I can’t believe people didn’t know about this.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
You may want to take a look at http://stackoverflow.com/
When I found this page I forgot about experts exchange, because it provides same useful information, but without ad-junk and payments.
I’ve tried it.
It made me smile after. Very clever trick from expert exchange. Only few users will scroll down that far. But now, the trick is exposed. We, unregistered users, will have a chance to view some answers now. Thanks.
hahahaha, I neva would have thought the damn answers would be at the bottom. That is truly some simple but clever stuff. Thanks for this Article. I went on and Stumbled it. Awesome!
I use this way:
A search on google using:
site:www.experts-exchange.com what ever you want
And i open the cached link of the post i interested.
Yeah, this has been around for a long time. But why do they do it? Do they not want people to sign up for their forums? Am I missing some SEO/scam trick they’re doing?
David I suspect they want to increase (paid) signups this way. Many users will pay to read the solution to their computer problem, won’t they?
Not if they see the answer at the bottom of the page! What I was getting at is why do they display the answers? It would be easy to hide them.
Because they would get penalized by Google if they would display all of the content to Googlebot and only part of it to the visitors.
err much easier method: there is three sign up options on expert exchange, one is the normal payment one, the second one is to sign up as a expert, here you dont have to pay, but you have to build an reputation by answering questions.. and the third and almost unknown one: http://www.experts-exchange.com/jsp/registerExpert.jsp
this one is free and doesn’t require anything at all.. you get a free account, login and you can use the site as a premium member ;)
edit: it seems that they have replaced the second behind the scenes link with the registration of the expert registration.. you this is the real link: http://www.experts-exchange.com/registerFree2.jsp it’s probably a country block, so you might wanna check out proxies to see if it still works.. i registered myself through this method ages ago.. that without paying a penny :)