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If The WSJ.com Says Goodbye To Google, It Will lose 25 Percent Of Its Traffic
- DanielStraight 17y agoThat 25 percent of their current traffic comes from Google does not necessitate that they will lose 25 percent of their traffic if they block Google. There are numerous reasons why this is true, and I'll give some of them, but the basic point is that nothing is that simple. 1. What percent of that Google traffic is coming from "I'm feeling lucky" hits by just typing "wsj" or "wall street journal" into the address bar? Presumably the people doing this could figure out how to find wsj.com without this feature. 2. What percent of that traffic is accidental search bar queries for wsj.com instead of address bar queries? I do this all the time, and once you're at the Google results, it's quicker to just click the link there. 3. How much traffic will be gained by blocking Google? It would be silly to ignore the fact that since this will be a big decision, people might check out wsj.com just to see how things are going since the Google block. People may also be impressed with the courage and more likely to trust and use wsj.com in the future.
- roundsquare 17y agoNever mind that in order to get people to pay for content, they first have to be able to find it. For new sites maybe... but the WSJ is well known, has a huge user base and will probably continue to for some time.