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Comment by randlet | Hacker News Reader

It's almost hard to believe we went so long without a site like StackOverflow. Not surprising they've grown so fast considering how much better they are than everyone else.

Congrats & thank you to Jeff & Joel & the rest of the SO team. You guys truly make the Internet a better place for all programmers!

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Yet ExpertSexChange is still near the top of Google search results - 'tis a mystery. Still, it validates the SEO business model that gaming the algorithm can get you higher ranked than real actual content of the kind SO has in buckets.

Ugh, I wish people would stop thinking it's clever to call Experts Exchange "ExpertSexChange". First, it's not clever, and second, it implies that there's something wrong with a sex change.

Ah yes, dismissive argument format #2837: "I hate when people say $foo. It's like $politically_incorrect_thing."

The problem is that calling "experts exchange" "expert sex change" does not say anything about the validity of a sex change operation. It's saying that it's a dumb name for a programming Q&A site. This makes it equivalent to saying, "I hate ExpertsExchange. Look at how dumb the name is."

I think you're wrong there Jonathan. The argument is that calling it "expert sex change" is like deriding eBay as "eGay" (I know I had to change a letter there: it's similar enough to be the same kind of thing.)

It's misusing something important and personal as a simple insult. It's impolite to use something like "sex change" as an insult. It's not "political correctness gone mad," it's good manners, and I think using it shows the author is either thoughtless or bigoted.

It is also a weak, ridiculous and puerile insult that adds no value to any debate. If Experts Exchange was awesome, we wouldn't criticise it for its name. We'd probably not even have noticed.

Experts exchange has been in business since at least 2001, they also have a bit actual content.

I think you can still just read Google's cached version for those results. The actual content is below the placeholder content.

any experts exchange result has the actual responses down at the bottom of the screen when you scroll down. They aren't "gaming" anything, the content is plainly there, just far below the fold.

Your comment validates my belief that most people don't understand SEO and think it's all evil

By ensuring their landing pages are as unusable as possible Experts Exchange is reducing the usefulness of search results. They are gaming the system to the detriment of everyone else and this is a perfect example of "evil" SEO.

The only reason this is the case is Google threatened to de-list them unless they showed the actual content the page was being cached for. They didn't tell anyone they shifted it down the bottom though, and the only way you can see that content is by using a search engine as a referring URL.

Not all SEO is evil but that one is a bit naughty.

Edit: spelling is awesome

There was a time when just above the answer was a license saying you weren't allowed to read the answer — but it's gone now, so I guess Google made then remove it. I didn't realise on my own that you could scroll down to the answers though, as the page is designed to make that appear not to be the case, so I'd say it is evil SEO.

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