3 ms·
>Why index something if the vast majority of users cannot access the pages behind the links? So people can find it? I'd be pissed if Google de-indexed somethin
by rhino369 11y ago
>Why index something if the vast majority of users cannot access the pages behind the links?
So people can find it? I'd be pissed if Google de-indexed something like IEEE because it has a paywall.
Assuming the internet has to be freely available is a mistake. Especially with the continued growth of an adblocked internet. We could be facing an internet with significant paywalls in the future.
I'd support a "free" search term to weed out paywalled results.
Furthermore, Google shouldn't be making normative judgements about what people should see. It's an abuse of their monopoly.
- morgante 11y agoGoogle doesn't forbid or de-index paywalls. What they forbid is cloaking (showing Google different content than what users will see). This is, of course, quite critical to maintaining search quality. WSJ is free to institute a full paywall and only serve snippets to Google. They might now like what it does to their rankings though. What they cannot do is continue to sniff the UA before deciding to put up the paywall. (Though I'm still able to use the Google trick, so it seems the experiment might have ended.)