15 ms·
To avoid paywall, you paste wsj urls into google and click on the result, so that the referrer url is google.com
by cft 15y ago
To avoid paywall, you paste wsj urls into google and click on the result, so that the referrer url is google.com
- neeleshs 15y agoInterestingly, that does not seem to work with SSL version of Google.
- senko 15y agoBrowsers strip Referer if the protocol is HTTP but the referrer's URL was HTTPS, to prevent the information about the resource just being left leak. If WSJ checks Referer and explicitly allows Google to pass, it won't see it if you're coming from HTTPS.
- 0x0 15y agoOnly if the link target is non-HTTPS, I believe. HTTPS-to-HTTPS requests includes referer headers, even across domains.
- thelibrarian 15y agoBrowsers do not send referrer headers is the referrer is an SSL site.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoFirefox users can just install RefControl and then configure it to always send google.com in the referer header when visiting wsj.com from a non wsj.com referer.
- ry0ohki 15y agoShouldn't Google penalize sites like this for cloaking?
- realshady 15y agoWhy would it be in Google's interest to do so? It makes coming in via search a better option, thus adds value to their site.
- dminor 15y agoGoogle only considers it cloaking if clicking on a link in the search results gives something different from what googlebot sees.
- byoung2 15y agoGoogle specifically allows this behavior for paid content. It is called "First Click Free" which allows your paid content to be indexed provided you allow at least the first click from search results to be freely-accessible to users. Afterwards, you can ask that they sign up/subscribe. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=74536 http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answe...