This tutorial will show you how to get free access to the paid support website Experts-Exchange. I will show you how to accomplish this using Firefox and the UserAgent switcher plug-in. I will give you a few examples of how to get free answers from this paid site. This solution has been known for a while, but as far as I know no one has writing a good step by step tutorial on how to implement it. I took it upon myself to do that. This may also work for other paid sites.

When Experts-Exchange first started it was great. It was a free support forum. After the owners of Experts-Exchange got a nice catalog of free community support answers, they decided to make it a paid service. The website now charges a monthly fee for access to the answers. I guess the money they are making from the tons of advertisements on the site just isn¡¯t enough. If you are going to make a paid site, make it ad free.

One of the big debates about the way Experts-Exchange operates is about its search results. When you search for a simple query in Google such as ¡°linksys vpn router port redirection¡± you will get a result displaying the Experts-Exchange answer. The weird part is that if you look at the Google results, it will display part of the actual answer to your question.

Now if you click through the link you will see that all of the answers are blurred out.

The site blurs the answers out so that you have to pay to see them. If you look at the search results, however, it shows the Googlebot the answers. I believe Experts-Exchange does this so that they will rank higher in the search engines. Some people believe that Experts-Exchange violates Google¡¯s rules because it is obviously show a different page to the search engine than it shows to the viewer. This is also known as cloaking content.

There are a couple of ways to get around this protection. I will show you the easiest on first. This trick will work in all browsers.

Once you find you answer in the Google search results, click on the cache link located below the result.

The page that opens will be a Googlebot cached page. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you will see the answers. This is because experts exchange allows the Googlebot to see the answers so they will rank higher.

This is a great way to view the answers if you find them through Google.

If you really want to have full access to the Experts-Exchange website I will show you a good solution. This solution will require that you are using Mozilla Firefox web browers. If you don¡¯t use it:
Get Firefox with Google Toolbar.

Once you have Firefox installed you will need to download the UserAgent switcher plug-in from the Mozilla Website (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59).
Click on the Install Now Button.

When the box pops up click on Install Now.

When the installation finished click the Restart Firefox button.

Once Firefox restarts, you will have access to the User Agent Switcher from the tools menu in Firefox. We will have to add a new user agent so the website will think that our browser is actually the Googlebot.

The User Agent Switcher option will appear. Click on User Agent in the box on the left of your screen.

Now click the Add button.

Add the following information. The UserAgent field should have this in it:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

Click the OK button to add the User Agent, then Click the OK button to exit the User Agent Switcher options.

Now whenever you visit the Experts-Exchange website you will want to go to Tools > User Agent Switch > Googlebot .

We are almost finish. Now if you enabled this after you have visited the website, you will still see the answers blurred out. This is because of a cookie download from the website. We will have to block all cookies from Experts-Exchange to prevent this from happening.

Go to Tools > Options on the Firefox Toolbar

Click on the Privacy Tab.

Notice that under the Cookies section our browser is accepting cookies until they expire. We do not want to accept any cookies from Expert-Exchange.com so we will have to add it to the Exceptions.

Click on the Exceptions Button.

Now enter the website address you would like to block. In this case I will enter: www.experts-exchange.com and then click the block button.

Experts-Exchange should now be added to the list with the status blocked.

You can now close this window and the options window. Before we are done we need to clear the cookies. On the Firefox Menu go to Tools > Clear Private Data.

Make sure that you check mark the box next to Cookies and then hit the Clear Private Data button.

Now as long as you select the Googlebot from the User Switch Agent options, you will be able to take advantage of browsing the Experts-Exchange website and getting your answers for free.

I hope this helps some of you guys out. It can be a real pain to be searching all day and find I result that looks like it could be the solution. Only to be bombarded with requests for payment so that you can see the answers. I have gone through that a few times.

Don¡¯t forget to switch back to the default user agent when you are not browsing experts exchange. Firefox can use all the help it can get when it comes to website collecting usage data based on your browser.

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