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Has the WSJ started to paywall Google users?
Until recently, the Wall Street Journal allowed users who saw an article in a Google search result to view that article without signing in. That is, traffic referred from Google bypassed the wsj.com paywall. This no longer seems to be the case. Does anyone know if this was an intentional change? If so, what does it say about the value of traffic from Google to the WSJ?
- greenyoda 11y agoI just noticed the same thing. It's possible that the WSJ has analyzed their logs and discovered that most of the traffic they're getting from Google is people searching for the exact text of article titles, in an attempt to circumvent their paywall. Or, it's possible that it's just a temporary misconfiguration. Only time will tell whether it's a temporary or permanent change.
- rleyden 11y agoWhat's changed is that switching browsers (or even devices) no longer extends the number of WSJ titles you can Google search successfully. 3 or 4 is the limit/day across all.