Maybe but that means the search engine had access to the article's contents "for free" and therefore has a copy of that content in its index. If I am not also a

Maybe but that means the search engine had access to the article's contents "for free" and therefore has a copy of that content in its index. If I am not also able to access that content the same way the search engine does (aka ... for free as an anonymous or not-logged-in user), that makes it a lot less appealing.