Me too, it popped up like last week and was the only result I could find (I already moved from DDG to Google because the results were irrelevant with any keyword combination I could make) and the answer was, like on stackoverflow, some "accepted" kind of answer (so marked by the person who asked the question). All posts were readable except that one: for the marked-as-answer post, you had to pay.
They've certainly moved on from scrolling down to see the answer...
If I recall correctly, it used to be the case that they only showed the answer to Googlebot and if you wanted it, you actually did have to pay (or perhaps forge your useragent)
I think a lot of people don't realize the answers are at the bottom, so they click on the link, see the request to register/pay to see the posts, and immediately back up, cursing the pseudo-paywall.
And at least at some point, it was only there if you had a google referer header. Navigating directly to the page in question wouldn't show you the answers at all.
I think they may have had a google-wall: if you came from google you could scroll down to the content, but if you were just browsing the forum you couldn't see the answers.
This seems to be new behavior (possibly to stem losses to StackOverflow?). Several months ago, they did not display answers, even when coming from Google. At some point before that, they displayed answers overlaid with an image to make the answers hard to read.
They were pretty obviously experimenting to find out what kind of annoyance would convince free users to sign up.
By the way, if you scroll ALL the way down to the bottom of any question page you do see the best answer. Apparently they bank on the fact most people won't scroll that far and get discouraged by the "paywall" on the top. The Google crawler requires the text to be visible I've heard
Could you? I thought they didn't make the answers available, and just always showed the grayed out text even if there was no real answer after you paid up? There were several incarnations of the site though, and of course I may well be mis-remembering, it was a long time ago...
What is Google Answers?
Google's search engine is a great way to find information online. But sometimes even experienced users need help finding exactly the answer they want to a question. Google Answers was an experimental product for users to get help from Researchers with expertise in online searching. Users could post a question to Google Answers and specify how much they were willing to pay for an answer. A Researcher then searched for the information they wanted and posted it to Google Answers. Users were only charged for questions only if and when an answer was posted to it. Other users may have also added comments to provide interesting perspectives to the data but were not paid for their posts. These questions and answers are now publicly viewable on the Google Answers website so other users can share the benefit of the research. We are no longer accepting new questions and answers.
I've seen people say this before - how do you mean "at the bottom". Every page I have seen highlights the "accepted answer" in green and does ask you to pay to access it..... am I missing a workaround?
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.
This is not new. IIRC they were forced to show the answers by Google, as an extension of the "Don't show Googlebot things you don't show regular visitors" rule.
Ah, so you only get those blurred answers if you come from a search engine. That's the first time I see it in action. I have javascript disabled so I get an opaque block over the answer.
I think at first they showed answers. Later they only showed answers to GoogleBot and tried to get you to jump through hoops to see them. Finally, Google smacked them down and they implemented a tricky system where you had to scroll and long way to see the answers. The site was designed to try to get you to sign-up or pay to see answers.
Overall it was a sleazy site, IMHO. Occasionally I would find useful answers there but eventually I just blacklisted them from my Google results. StackOverflow is miles better than EE ever was.
I did click the question mark. It was the only thing on the page that appeared to do anything other than the auto-completion mechanism for the answer field.
If it's any consolation, as a regular reader, I rarely look for the answer with the green checkmark. I read through the top X answers until I find one that answers the question in terms I can understand. Perhaps a better fix is to mark the question as Answered, rather than mark a Specific Answer.
They've certainly moved on from scrolling down to see the answer...
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