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Google has "kinda" allowed this to happen for a number of years. They used to push sites to have a "first read free" policy so that their bot can still access

Google has "kinda" allowed this to happen for a number of years. They used to push sites to have a "first read free" policy so that their bot can still access semi-gated content. Now they suggest "flexible sampling" [0] to let "users" view a limited amount of content per time period. This is a game Google has been playing for a while that goes beyond SEO and seems to really be some issue with publishers. But to be fair there are a number of instances where publishers want free access to Google's search pages and users while requesting a fee for writing the content they indexed in the first place. [0] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/appearance/flexible-sampling https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/appearanc...

whakim 5y ago
There's a number of ways that you can expose paywalled content to Google without showing it to the user. The obvious one is paywalling content on the client side and hiding it from the user. I actually think this probably explains why client-side paywalling is so prevalent even though it's obviously far less effective. You can also serve your content in structured data that google's bots read (e.g. json+ld). I also think it's a tricky question because people often want to see authoritative sites high up in the search results even if they're paywalled, so "delisting these sites" isn't a solution that satisfies most people.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Hiding content is supposed to be against Google's stated policies.
  - kikokikokiko 5y ago
    Try searching for a news article, using the exact same title, as it's published on let's say... Breitbart. Now tell me that Google do not "hide" sites from it's users.
  - whakim 5y ago
    Google's policies explicitly differentiate between paywalled content from what they call cloaking. See the GP's link to the Google developer documentation.

whakim 5y ago

There's a number of ways that you can expose paywalled content to Google without showing it to the user. The obvious one is paywalling content on the client side and hiding it from the user. I actually think this probably explains why client-side paywalling is so prevalent even though it's obviously far less effective. You can also serve your content in structured data that google's bots read (e.g. json+ld). I also think it's a tricky question because people often want to see authoritative sites high up in the search results even if they're paywalled, so "delisting these sites" isn't a solution that satisfies most people.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
Hiding content is supposed to be against Google's stated policies.
- kikokikokiko 5y ago
  Try searching for a news article, using the exact same title, as it's published on let's say... Breitbart. Now tell me that Google do not "hide" sites from it's users.
- whakim 5y ago
  Google's policies explicitly differentiate between paywalled content from what they call cloaking. See the GP's link to the Google developer documentation.