Yes, you're right, I can see the blurring in certain cases now.

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.

I'm pleased -- perhaps -- in that enough Googlers read HN that now maybe this blurring BS will be addressed.

Of course, it will be addressed by another "true name" purveyor. My head hurts.

IIRC, https sites do not send referer, so that makes sense.

https sites sends referers only to other https sites (even crossdomain), but not when navigating from https to http.

I can't see those in the HTML, whether I'm logged in or not, but I have used googleoff & googleon in HTML comments before - they're used to control which parts of a page can be ignored when using a Google Search Appliance.

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.