
Ask HN: Why is Quora popular all of a sudden? - senorgusto
It seems like Quora has been popping up in Google searches more and more lately, and it&#x27;s doubled in popularity in the last year [0]. Does anybody have any idea why? They recently pushed out a snazzy new design (at least for Quora.com), but this can&#x27;t be the only reason. What do people think?<p>[0] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;trends&#x2F;explore#q=%2Fm%2F0bm8t1r
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SwellJoe
I dunno about its changing popularity, but like Expert Sexchange before it, I
actively avoid Quora. It was the first site I added to my Google Personal
Blocklist, and the reason I installed the plugin.

Their unsubscribe form is (or was last I saw it in 2015) a nastier piece of
work than I could imagine, even if told: Come up with the most annoying
unsubscribe form you can. Make it really hard to unsubscribe from
everything...make'em work for it.

Quora, I hope, will continue to lose to much better, much more ethical, Q&A
sites. The Stack Exchange sites seem like the market leaders, as they probably
should be. They do nearly everything right, and they do it without being
smarmy. Sites that believe they have a _right_ to my attention, and are
willing to cheat to get it, really ought to be shunned in polite company. I'm
not sure how they've managed to maintain a patina of legitimacy after all
these years of being no-good, shiftless, internet hucksters. We, as a
community, usually shun the hell out of spammers...and yet, when Quora (and
LinkedIn, for another example of a spammer getting a pass) do it, most folks
just shrug as though it's no big deal. Does a certain level of economic
success lend credibility even when behaving in ways that deserve no
credibility?

Not that I'm grumpy about it, or anything.

~~~
meowface
On mobile, they make you install their app to look at anything at all.

Any company that needs dozens of "dark patterns" and tricks to stay afloat
probably shouldn't exist. LinkedIn is the same.

~~~
Tomte
They suggest their app, but the web site is fully working on mobile (Android
in my case).

~~~
maaarghk
I wouldn't say fully working. I'm using Chrome on a nexus 5X and whenever I go
to their website I get a banner to install the app which is extremely
difficult to remove. Tiny, tiny touch area. It then gets in the way enough to
make the useable viewport ridiculously small.

~~~
meowface
Same experience here.

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wiseleo
They did a very good job attracting core early contributors who wrote unique
great content and then it snowballed. Reading answers posted by the top 10
contributors is just fun. All content is SEO-friendly. Much of it is
authoritative and Google loves authoritative content. There is a setting to
make my content appear as anonymous to search engines, but many of us
associate our names with our content.

Most of Quora's content is evergreen. They improved question merging recently
and that resulted in a high concentration of high quality answers to popular
questions. Quora's management calls them canonical questions. The ask2answer
flow also improved. You can now find people who can answer your questions.
That feature was previously under-developed and didn't work very well.

Quora's top contributors enjoy the virtuous cycle. We write answers and people
upvote them, which introduces other readers to us. Our audiences are massive.
I only have about 250,000 views per month and about 5500 followers, but some
other writers have several million per month and more than 20,000 followers.

Quora will collapse answers that are highly upvoted but incorrect. This helps
with site quality and likely pleases Google.

I am one of about 800 Quora's Top Writers (
[http://quora.com/Leonid-S.-Knyshov](http://quora.com/Leonid-S.-Knyshov) ) if
you have any specific questions.

~~~
hkmurakami
A lot of what you've listed have been true for a long time though. It wouldn't
explain a sudden increase in Google search rankings.

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Houshalter
The last time I checked quora put up a big "create an account to read this
website", which seems to be gone now.

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Dwolb
In addition to wiseleo's comment, the key thing I think they got right was the
weekly digest. It's never too frequent, it's relative, interesting, and fresh.

It was important to get the digest right because it granted Quora permission
to keep getting user's attention even when away from the site (push vs pull)
and also gave users a 'takeaway' \- either information or topics of discussion
to debate with friends through real conversation or an email forward.

This feature lets them have high retention rates and increases word-of-mouth
to gain new users.

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inglor
This so much. I usually unsubscribe very fast from these sort of emails - I
accidentally left a checkbox marked when I signed up to read an article and it
actually got me hooked. Lots of good material.

I would love to read an article about how to create such digest emails.
Typically they are truly terrible but they managed to make it interesting.

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said
I've seen some great answers on Quora, but their growth is possibly due to
spam. I hate to accuse them of that, but...

Quora lets you sign up using a Google account. Normally, this means you won't
need to create a new password. However, Quora _immediately_ asks you to
provide one.

With that in mind, what's the point of linking your Google account? Well,
according to this recent thread, Quora tries to access your contacts:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/3ax27p/tried_to_re...](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/3ax27p/tried_to_register_with_quora_using_my_gmail/)

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moonshinefe
That seems possible. Everything I've seen from that site indicates it's
terrible.

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doseofreality
Please login to see the answer to this question.

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moonshinefe
Do they still make you sign up to view all the answers? I remember being
greatly annoyed that the site kept coming up at the top of Google results,
only to be blocked by needing to login.

Whereas other rivals sites like the ___ exchanges didn't have this nag.

~~~
mullsork
Shouldn't Google catch on to this stuff and demote their site ranking?

~~~
jaxbot
Google's policy is that the first link from google's results must be freely
viewable, but any other links on the site can be paywalled, login-walled, etc.
That's why you can often just google a WSJ article or the title of another
Quora question and view the results freely. It's all based on the HTTP
referer.

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vinod1073
India is the reason! Look at the regional interest graph at the mentioned URL!
Quora is more popular in India than in any other country!

Also change the country drop down filter below the search bar from Worldwide
to India. You see an exponential rise in popularity, and the rise is not
sudden.
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0bm8t1r&geo=I...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0bm8t1r&geo=IN&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-5%3A30)

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insulanian
Because asking a question on Stack Overflow is becoming a formal skill, for
God's sake!

It gets more annoying and restrictive every day so that I have to think trice
before deciding if I should go again trough that agony of asking a question
and fight with SO admins to keep it from being closed.

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chanux
I think I was on the site yesterday. Went there through a link on twitter and
clicked a link on that page. I was presented with the dreaded 'sign up to see'
overlay dark pattern.

PS: I deleted my account sometimes back because I thought they used too many
dark patterns to my taste at the time.

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durub
Tip: when presented with the dreaded sign up to see overlay, you can add
?share=1 to the end of the URL to bypass it.

~~~
justincormack
Or you can just stop using the site. I deleted all my content from the site
several years ago as I only wanted to write public content, and have never
bothered to visit since.

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arihant
The question is -- Is it good for Quora?

Recently the site has basically become a plagiarism echo chamber. People
copy/paste blogs verbatim in a bid for upvotes. Maybe Quora should stop
optimizing for Facebook's key metrics like MAU.

Maybe the whole point of Quora is higher quality content, a special place
which only allows for certain standard of content. If everyone can have a
guard of honor, then it is simply a guard. If anyone is allowed to answer on
Quora, it's simply a content mill. And the wrong kind at that.

To be what Quora is trying to be, you need a heavy handed deletionist culture.
For that you need passionate people who spend time doing that, and you need an
open platform. Both of which Quora is not. It's like they had a decent idea in
2010 but never really improvised.

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jdross
My understanding from speaking with former PM's is they moved their sign-up-
to-view "paywall" from the first page you view to the second page, at least
when you come from a social network or search engine. That obviously increases
the relevance and search score when the answer is high quality.

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adarsh_thampy
Google algorithms keep changing all the time. Personally, I haven't noticed
Quora results come up in Google search more often.

It could be that Google is tracking your clicks with cookies and showing you
more of the sites you click frequently in the search results. Or the queries
you are using might be dominated by Quora.

While I dislike Quora for forced sign up (with an even weirder explanation for
why you need to have an account), some of the answers there are top notch. I
haven't seen such depth in any Q&A sites.

------
androng
Why is Stack Overflow so popular? The website is full of very frequently asked
questions and insightful answers for all topics, not just the few topics that
Stack Overflow and its sister sites have. And often the highly upvoted answers
in the "Life" category are stories, not just answers. It is a place to pick
the minds of people more experienced.

Most importantly, the site is SEO friendly.

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airesQ
Going for the other comments on this thread, I guess I have a better opinion
of Quora than most here.

I do appreciate the insider comments we get from a wide variety of areas.

My only gripe is a question of style, namely the style that comes when most
content creators are in it for self-promotion (which is fine btw); in the end
it feels like everyone is in a job interview.

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ogezi
Quora is probably the best social network-ish website ever. It probably
gathers all the smartest people on the internet. After I started using Quora I
quit fb and twitter. It's not an apples to apples comparison but you get the
idea. There are much less trolls because most people on Quora are smart enough
to do other things.

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BilalBudhani
I believe this question will get insightful answers on Quora itself. You
thought of posting it there as well?

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jpeg_hero
a lot of the content they surface seems to be targeted to people's
inner-13-year-old-boy. Grandiose fantasies of world domination.

1\. how do i make a million dollars in a week?

2\. who in history made $1 billion in the easiest way?

3\. who is smarter Terrance Tso or Leibniz?

4\. what's faster Ferrari or Lamborghini?

and finally:

5\. who would win: Boxer vs. Ninja?!?!?!

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eecks
6\. Who is smarter Bill Gates or Steve Jobs?

7\. Why do some people think Mark Zuckerberg is a good programmer?

8\. What skills do people who work at Google have that other people don't
have?

9\. What are the top things to do before applying for a position at Google?

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baby
On the contrary I've been there less and less. There was a time where I was
looking to contribute but the website is flooded with fake users generated
questions. I guess they have to do that to fake the growth and attract more
people but it just felt empty then...

~~~
TheLogothete
Oh, you've been using it less? It must be the case for everyone else then.

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KuhlMensch
I miss Aardvark :(

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elorant
Because the network effect has started to apply. There are enough users now to
make the whole ecosystem interesting.

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onion2k
_but this can 't be the only reason_

Why not?

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uber1geek
Because people have questions, all the time.

