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I remember in the early days of Google, it was a big no-no for sites to serve different content to Google than to actual users. Sites caught doing this would be

I remember in the early days of Google, it was a big no-no for sites to serve different content to Google than to actual users. Sites caught doing this would be banned from Google, so SEO advice quickly became widespread: don't do this, it will hurt you. But results like this seem to be commonplace now, with Google doing nothing about it. This article seems to be overt confirmation that Google no longer has an issue with this. Sad to see, though of course Google jumped the shark a long time ago.

fastball 7y ago
But... that actually doesn't apply here? In fact, it's the exact opposite of what you are saying. Google isn't encouraging anyone to deliver different results to Google. It is providing a solution that serves the same content to all users (and search engines). That is exactly the thing you said they were espousing previously. Previously, the actually worthwhile solution to paywalling was to not load the content at all until after auth. This means that you were showing different content to a google spider vs. a subbed user. Now it's the same.
- detaro 7y ago
  And before, showing different content to Google than to a random web user was bad.
  - xnyan 7y ago
    Repeating the same thing you just said in response to an argument is not an argument. Encryption is not changing content, in fact it's the only way to prove that the content was not changed from the version google indexed vs what your are seeing. Please correct me if I am wrong, but google has always indexed paywalled sites, in other words there has never been a guarantee you have rights to view what google indexed. The only sin is to say "I told google I have A" but really you have B. It seems like what you are arguing is that google should not index paywalled sites. This is a legitimate desire of course, but has never been reality.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - detaro 7y ago
      As far as I know you are wrong, Google in the past did insist sites shouldn't serve paywalls to users coming via Google when they gave the full page content to Google. Which made the "google the article title" workaround for paywalls work. (Also, this was my first comment in this thread)
      - joshuamorton 7y ago
        Yes and no. It looks like since 2009, there was a max to the "FCF" policy, and it was entirely dropped in 2017: https://searchengineland.com/google-first-click-free-replaced-flexible-sampling-283667 https://searchengineland.com/google-first-click-free-replace...
    - bscphil 6y ago
      > Encryption is not changing content, in fact it's the only way to prove that the content was not changed from the version google indexed vs what your are seeing. Yes it is changing the content. From the point of view of Google's web crawler, the content is decrypted automatically and it sees, and indexes, the true page. From the point of view of my client, which is not signed into the paywall, I see an encrypted blob that I can't do anything with unless I sign in. This is, of course, the point that everyone is making. Saying "well the content of the blob is the same whether you can view it or not" isn't relevant - the question is whether you can view it.

fastball 7y ago

But... that actually doesn't apply here? In fact, it's the exact opposite of what you are saying. Google isn't encouraging anyone to deliver different results to Google. It is providing a solution that serves the same content to all users (and search engines). That is exactly the thing you said they were espousing previously. Previously, the actually worthwhile solution to paywalling was to not load the content at all until after auth. This means that you were showing different content to a google spider vs. a subbed user. Now it's the same.

detaro 7y ago
And before, showing different content to Google than to a random web user was bad.
- xnyan 7y ago
  Repeating the same thing you just said in response to an argument is not an argument. Encryption is not changing content, in fact it's the only way to prove that the content was not changed from the version google indexed vs what your are seeing. Please correct me if I am wrong, but google has always indexed paywalled sites, in other words there has never been a guarantee you have rights to view what google indexed. The only sin is to say "I told google I have A" but really you have B. It seems like what you are arguing is that google should not index paywalled sites. This is a legitimate desire of course, but has never been reality.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - detaro 7y ago
    As far as I know you are wrong, Google in the past did insist sites shouldn't serve paywalls to users coming via Google when they gave the full page content to Google. Which made the "google the article title" workaround for paywalls work. (Also, this was my first comment in this thread)
    - joshuamorton 7y ago
      Yes and no. It looks like since 2009, there was a max to the "FCF" policy, and it was entirely dropped in 2017: https://searchengineland.com/google-first-click-free-replaced-flexible-sampling-283667 https://searchengineland.com/google-first-click-free-replace...
  - bscphil 6y ago
    > Encryption is not changing content, in fact it's the only way to prove that the content was not changed from the version google indexed vs what your are seeing. Yes it is changing the content. From the point of view of Google's web crawler, the content is decrypted automatically and it sees, and indexes, the true page. From the point of view of my client, which is not signed into the paywall, I see an encrypted blob that I can't do anything with unless I sign in. This is, of course, the point that everyone is making. Saying "well the content of the blob is the same whether you can view it or not" isn't relevant - the question is whether you can view it.