News Corp. to block Google? Probably not.
There has been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere of Rupert Murdoch’s threat of blocking Google and implementing paywalls. In a great article over at Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan delves into the intricacies of Google News Search and alternatives that may actually play out with insight from an interview with Josh Cohen of Google News. This is what Sullivan lays out on SearchEngineLand.com as to how Google currently handles free and paid news content:
Free Content: Content is free. Google can index an entire story to make it searchable. People can find the story in Google and read the entire thing for free.
First Click Free: Content is behind a paywall. Google is allowed past and can index the entire story to make it searchable. People can find it in Google and read the entire thing for free. From that story, people cannot click to read other stories at the same publication for free (hence, the “first click free” name). However, people can potentially go back to Google, find another article from the same site, click to it from Google and read that.
Subscription: Content is behind a paywall [or requires free registration to read]. Google is allowed past and can index the entire story to make it searchable. People can find it in Google. They can only read the entire thing if they pay [or register].
Preview: Content is behind a paywall [or requires free registration to read]. Google is NOT allowed past to index the entire story to make it searchable. People can find it in Google only based on the preview content. They can only read the entire thing if they pay [or register].
Ultimately, this means that there are many options for News Corp that will be better business decisions than blocking search engines. There is much more on the topic at SearchEngineLand.com.
Please, Joe, don’t give Murdoch good advice. Let him bury all of his news behind the pay wall. He’d trade profit for influence, and we’d all be the better.