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Wall Street Journal's Google Traffic Drops 44% After Pulling Out of First Click Free (bloomberg.com)
In February, the Wall Street Journal blocked Google users from reading free articles, resulting in a fourfold increase in the rate of visitors converting into paying customers. The tradeoff, as reported by Bloomberg, is a decrease in traffic from Google. Since the WSJ ended its support for Google's "first click free" policy, traffic from Google plummeted 44 percent. From the report: Google search results are based on an algorithm that scans the internet for free content. After the Journal's free articles went behind a paywall, Google's bot only saw the first few paragraphs and started ranking them lower, limiting the Journal's viewership. Executives at the Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., argue that Google's policy is unfairly punishing them for trying to attract more digital subscribers. They want Google to treat their articles equally in search rankings, despite being behind a paywall. The Journal's experience could have implications across the news industry, where publishers are relying more on convincing readers to pay for their articles because tech giants like Google and Facebook are vacuuming up the lion's share of online advertising. Google says its "first click free" policy is good for both consumers and publishers. People want to get the news quickly and don't want to immediately encounter a paywall. Plus, if publishers let Google users sample articles for free, there's a better chance they'll end up subscribing, Google says. The tech giant likens its policy to stores allowing people to flip through newspapers and magazines before choosing which one to buy.
After what the WSJ did to Youtube (cost them 1 billion dollars) how the holy shit does WSJ still have anything to do with Google? Why didn't they delist them, ban them from adsense, and try to pretend they don't exist on the internet as payback for their bullshit?
I had subscriptions to The New York Times and Wall Street Journal for years, so the paywall situation doesn't effect me. However, I agree with the way Google prioritizes free content vs. paywall content. WSJ will have to find the sweet spot between offering free content and acquiring subscribers. Just like every other content creator on the Internet.
They index and rank what is available. If you want something to be indexed and ranked... make it available. I've no sympathy at all for someone who wants simultaneously have and eat their cake.
The market will find a balance between monetization and reader base. I suspect it will involve giving away a complete summary and limiting subscribers to those interested in in-depth analysis.
Want to know the future? Look at what college kids are doing. When Forbes implemented their paywall the number of citations they recieved, and more importantly the number of citations the authors and articles highlighted in Forbes, dropped to almost nothing. Just look up the cite numbers at your local Alma Mater Library portal.
Forbes is dead to anyone under 28.
Now the Wall Street Journal wants to go the same route. What do these companies think will happen when potential customers grow up, go to university, get advanced degrees, and start their career without having any direct contact? They think of paywalled companies as relics of their parent's generation, doomed to die and never convert to customers.
Having a paywall is an explicit "We want our company to die with baby boomers."
So WSJ wants what is essentially free advertising for its articles. If it's so important, WSJ should pay Google with Ad Sense like every other company.
Google's search result would be trash if every other link led to a page that needs subscription. Plain and simple. Then there are those geolocked sites, too...
For decades, sites have been falling over themselves to appear more palatable to search engines. Now REVOLT! Good for the net. Keep it up.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
The WSJ is NOT hurting. They are gaining subscribers, and they are losing freeloaders. I will no longer read WSJ articles, but that is no loss for them, because I never paid them for anything and I never will, and I never click on the ads. Eyeballs are worth nothing if they can't be monetized.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/w...
On May 19th, WSJ published an editorial AGAINST Net Neutrality. Now, they want a provider to lean over backwards to give them better access to customers, for "fairness". LOL hypocrites.
Oh, you should really look at the WSJ closer. Despite the often-ridiculous stances of their editorial page, their news room is one of the most reputable and high quality in the business. We should be thanking them for keeping quality reporting and investigation alive in this environment.
"They want Google to treat their articles equally in search rankings, despite being behind a paywall"
When I Google I look for article(s) that I can read, not articles that I have to hand over my wallet in order to read
I only hand my wallet over to my wife
Well, you know the problem with Google's "first click free", was that if you repeatedly used incognito mode to Google search any WSJ article headline and open the link, every click turned out to be free... So the WSJ may have gotten wise to that and realized that completely cutting off people would finally get them to pony up the money.
Same for a lot of paywalls where they want to get you in the door but aren't measuring the unintended effects (cannibalizing their own subscription rate) very well....
I disagree.
Relevance is measured in eyeballs, not subscribers. Back in the days when I was riding the train into the city, you could tell the serious people from the unserious ones by what paper they were reading. With online, it's word of mouth, not the paper you see people with.
It's a long term death sentence to put up a paywall.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Dude nobody in finance reads the WSJ. Everyone follows Bloomberg.
The WSJ is for people who think it's a relevant source of information because it has "Wall Street" in the name. They're the same people who think that "Vitamin water" is healthier than a can of Coke.
lucm, indeed.
Bullshit. Every editorial I've read there in the last couple of years has had a strong conservative slant, just as you'd expect of a newspaper aimed predominantly at rich people (and poor people who think they're going to become rich people).
Translation: "I saw an opinion that wouldn't fit in my safe space, so I ran away from my standard Republican-leaning news source to an alt-right-leaning news source." There's nothing liberal about the WSJ, as even a cursory glance at their editorials will reveal.
If there's a better argument for anti-trust investigations against Google than this, then I can't think of it.
Let me put it like this:
You want to open a telephone company or a cable company. But the thicket of laws preventing access to telephone poles either owned by the government or by another company are off limits to you by law.
You want to put in wired phones, you cannot. You have to go to the local telecom monopoly and pay them - at rates they set - to use them. You are not permitted to install your own. If you build a subdivision, you are required to install the infrastructure then pay the local telephone/cable monopoly a fee to take them over from you and you don't get any money for it.
If you want to set up cell phone towers, then you have to go, hat in hand, to the major telecoms and ask "Please sir, may I have some spectrum?" because there's not any available that aren't in the major telecom's players hands. And spectrum is sold at auction so if you want to out bid a industry with billions of dollars, please feel free. In fact, please do - I want to watch.
Google does not stop you from creating your own search engine. If you don't want Google to index your site, it's a trivial entry in the robots.txt file to let them know they are not welcome. And unlike other search engine operators, Google actually honors your explicit request to drop your site from their index and stop spidering your site.
Google invested many hundreds of thousands of man hours to create an indexing system you want to force them to give away to others. Communists do that too, you know. Force people to give up their private property, labor, and time.
I'm good with it if you disagree with Google's business model - but Google isn't stopping anyone from creating an even better search engine.
So... when are you getting started on that better search engine? Again, I wanna watch. I have popcorn.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
News in it's current state is not getting my money.
There's very few that aren't just all click bait and stories about celebrities, and even the NYT has decided that luring climate denialists is a positive business decision.
They'd get /some/ money if there was something like Newsflix, that cost 10 bucks a month to subscribe to everything, but I'm not paying 10-20 of them that each because I might be directed to them once a month from a search.
They probably allow access to "googlebot" just not other browers. So technically possible, but against google tos.
So what's stopping us from posing as Googlebot? Are WSJ also filtering on IPs?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
"owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., argue that Google's policy is unfairly punishing them for trying to attract more digital subscribers."
Even in theory it is impossible to "unfairly punish" Murdoch's News Corp.
Relevance is measured in eyeballs, not subscribers. Back in the days when I was riding the train into the city, you could tell the serious people from the unserious ones by what paper they were reading. With online, it's word of mouth, not the paper you see people with.
It's a long term death sentence to put up a paywall.
This was the prevailing wisdom for much of the internet's rise, but I'm not sure it's as true anymore. Despite an avalanche of media outlets, there are not too many media generators (e.g., companies that gather news, that develop original programming, etc.). The rise of Netflix and its ilk is a testament to this. I'm not going to make a prediction on the future of media, but placing bets on free content solely funded by advertising is by no means a sure bet.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
The simple truth is that there a million sources for news.
There actually aren't. The vast majority of news is generated from a handful of organizations with real humans on the ground doing the work. The other "sources" of news read and summarize those original articles, often with a much lower quality level. If you believe that by searching the internet for news you're getting a "million" different opinions and analyses, you're just wrong.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
they should buy the advertisement on google.
seeriously. if they cannot view the info for free how the fuck could they index it for free and why would anyone of googles customers like that info to be there in the first place if they cannot access it.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The editorial page leans fairly Republican. The actual reportage is substantially more liberal - though definitely in the Bloomberg/Clinton rather than the Sanders manner.
The search engines purpose is to locate accessible information.
Information behind a paywall is not accessible, hence should not be indexed.
As it is behind a paywall, it is up to the owner to provide their own indexing and search capability.
Simple enough for you?
Unfortunately these days it seems it is not simple enough for Google.
This is because it long ago stopped being a search system, and instead became an information aggregator, of which search is only one area of application.
Google has realised that controlling all the information is more valuable than providing an index of it, hence they are willing to participate in these games.
I have a long string of "-site:xxxxxxxxx.com" to add to pretty much any search query I use, simply to weed out the useless pages. Just add "-site:wsj.com" to yours.
I wish Google would offer the option to store such a string and add it automatically to every query you send. I'm pretty sure that information would be enlightening, also to their advertisers...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The answer is obviously the first one and a ranking algorithm is going to take relevance into account. I don't see any reason that Google owes any paywall site a free lunch. More to the point, putting paywalls high in the list risks degrades the quality of results and therefore hurts Google.
Google should tell them to GTFO. Maybe even delist paywalls entirely.
Back in the days when I was riding the train into the city, you could tell the serious people from the unserious ones by what paper they were reading.
Sir Humphrey: The only way to understand the Press is to remember that they pander to their readers' prejudices.
Jim Hacker: Don't tell me about the Press. I know *exactly* who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually *do* run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who *own* the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another* country. The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard Woolley: Sun readers don't care *who* runs the country - as long as she's got big tits.
What is a search engine's purpose? To find you relevant information? Or to find you less relevant free information?
If the information is trapped behind a paywall then the search engine can't find it for you. At most it can hint that it might exist. The WSJ wants to have its cake and eat it too. They basically want google to provide free advertising for them. I have no interest in a subscription to WSJ and as far as I'm concerned any results trapped behind a paywall should rightfully be lower in the rankings of relevance. If I wanted a subscription to WSJ I would already have one. If WSJ wants to trade fewer total readers for more paying readers I get that and have no problem with it. But I also have no interest in google returning search results that are trapped behind paywalls because that is approximately useless to me.
And that same newsroom was really unhappy with editorial decisions to soften the paper's coverage of Trump during the election. The newsroom may be reputable, but what ultimately makes it to the page wasn't. Those who didn't agree were told to go work for another paper. (http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-journal-editor-trump-coverage-fake-news-2017-2)