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Outline is a service which bypasses WSJ's paywall. I believe it does so by imitating a web crawler. The idea is that WSJ can't paywall a crawler otherwise its S
by SeanAnderson 8y ago
Outline is a service which bypasses WSJ's paywall. I believe it does so by imitating a web crawler. The idea is that WSJ can't paywall a crawler otherwise its SEO will be destroyed. Thus it is a reliable way to capture the information.
- craftyguy 8y agoThanks. Rather than just post random links to unheard of sites, it would be great if those links had a short description of what the link is.
- oh_sigh 8y agoI agree, and FYI, if you click the 'web' link which is under the article title on the comments page, if you click the first result, you will have google effectively do what outline.com does for you.
- bredren 8y agoI'm confused on why this works. I see the promoted version at the top of the SERPs opens up the full article, but the first actual SERP, which is the same article shows the paywall.
- oh_sigh 8y agoDo you know why google allows WSJ et al to serve one set of content to a crawler, but another to an actual user? I thought they punished that kind of behavior.
- SeanAnderson 8y agoI don't have any information that isn't public, no. Just building off of previous discussions of outline.com in HN threads.