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I'm beginning to believe that the WSJ and others are starting to monitor the number of referrals directly from google and if it hits some threshold they turn on
by jrs235 10y ago
I'm beginning to believe that the WSJ and others are starting to monitor the number of referrals directly from google and if it hits some threshold they turn on the paywall for the article for some period of time as the direct link from google in incognito doesn't always work for me either.
"Oh look! Direct hits from google have gone up 300% (or have been hit XX times) in the last 2 minutes... turn on the sliding 5 minute paywall!"
- aembleton 10y agoOr they check by IP Address. They know the Google ones as they regularly crawl all of their site whereas the IP addresses of random HN users don't.
- detaro 10y agoThe workaround only exists because Google requires sites to serve users the same page as the crawlers, so if they do that Google should de-rank them or throw them out of the index.
- jrs235 10y agoI agree. But if they are in fact using some "temporary" paywall "technology" then it would be [more] difficult for google to know and/or catch them in the act. As someone else stated in these comments: "If you start an incognito window with a Google News search for the headline and can't access it, use the "Send Feedback" link at the bottom of the search page to let Google know."