See for example: http://www.quora.com/Bayesian-Inference/How-do-Bayesian-algo...
The answers are in a span with class "blurred_answer", which has css styles: "color: transparent; text-shadow: 0 0 7px #777". Which in effect makes the text completely unreadable to humans.
This is just one step above "color: #fff; background-color: #fff".
Scummy.
http://www.quora.com/Bayesian-Inference/How-do-Bayesian-algo...
I checked with two different browsers (Opera and Firefox under Windows).
Could this mean that the Quora PR machine is up in full swing trying to undo damage (at least in the case of specific links that people cite)?
Although I see in the html source there are some html comments "googleoff". I've never heard of those before.
I guess "googleon"'ing the first answer is enough to get google juice while staying within the letter of rules, it's still really spammy.
(Plus, how does that play with other search engines?)
If I go to the link you cited directly it is not blurred.
But I if search for "How do Bayesian algorithms work" in Google, then click the link that Google finds, then it is blurred.
Once you get the blurred Quora page, then even going to the link directly will get you a blurred page. If you delete all the Quora cookies, then it'll be back to being readable (non-blurred).
Interestingly, if you use Google's encrypted service ( https://encrypted.google.com/ ) to search for "How do Bayesian algorithms work", you'll get a non-blurred Quora page.
Of course, it will be addressed by another "true name" purveyor. My head hurts.
So, if Quora use a GSA (or rack of them) to power their site search, they can ensure parts of the page aren't added to the index of the search. This can be helpful if you want to exclude areas that are repeated a lot in the site but are not helpful if you are searching, like navigation or help panels.
(Quick edit) googleoff/googleon are completely ignored by normal Google, AFAIK it's only used for their Appliance products.
I tried this in Firefox and Chrome in both normal and Private/Incognito modes.
Source: http://nerdr.com/see-quora-answers-without-signing-up/
Presumably I could View Source or something; but hey, there's no shortage of info on the web without the silly hoops.