Categories: OLD Media Moves

WSJ pulls back free articles from Google

Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand.com writes about how The Wall Street Journal, which has a paywall for most of its content, has pulled some of its free content from Google.

Sullivan writes, “As it turns out, the Journal has been keeping some stories out of First Click Free for over half-a-year.

“‘Google FCF [First Click Free] is a way to introduce our content to new readers and broaden our audience. As a strategy, we hold back a few of our top stories by not having the full story crawled, which limits select articles from being available via FCF. We have been doing this since last summer as a strategy to encourage subscriptions,’ emailed Ashley S. Huston, Vice President, Corporate Communications, for the Wall Street Journal, when I asked about the situation.

“The Wall Street Journal, like many newspapers with registration requirements or paywalls, participates in Google’s First Click Free program. That program allows publications to provide the full-text of articles to Google that are normally kept behind some type of barrier. This means Google can better understand what a story is about, which in turn means it might have more visibility in Google, generating more traffic for the publication.

“To be in First Click Free, Google requires that anyone coming to those articles from a Google search be allowed to read the entire article, without having to register or pay. This helps reduce people who get upset with Google for listing content that they can’t easily view.

“If the person tries to click from the article they found via search to another article, then a barrier is allowed to go up. They get the first click from Google for free, hence the ‘First Click Free’ name. All subsequent clicks can be blocked unless they’ve registered or paid.”