Get Free Access to Pay-Walled Content with a Simple Google Hack

http://lifehacker.com/5443857/get-free-access-to-pay+walled-content-with-a-simple-google-hack

by kosofalla • 17 years ago

3 4 17 years ago

patio112• 17 years ago

This is abusing Google's monopoly bargaining power to steal from content creators. For shame.

(Here's the bargain: "You will implement First Click Free or you will vanish from our search results, to be replaced by the people who copy/paste your articles and put AdSense on them.")

sorbus• 17 years ago

They could always make only a portion of their article available - say, the first paragraph or two. Some sites do this for non-paying users. Admittedly, the content-free nature of such a choice might adversely effect their standing.

Or implement a server-side thing to check if the requester is a googlebot, and if so give them the entire page, or if not ask them to register/pay. Might raise some issues with Google's cache, but that could probably be worked around (does Google allow sites to opt-out of that? Does that influence their positioning?)

EDIT: Having noticed that Google refers to this as cloaking, and dislikes it rather extremely, I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out what would work better. So, it does seem like a bit of an issue ...

patio112• 17 years ago

Yes -- if you do that, Google will adjust your position to "out of the index". (It is classic cloaking.)

joeconyers• 17 years ago

I use a firefox addon called refcontrol (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/953) for all these paywall sites. Don't even have to search.

Get Free Access to Pay-Walled Content with a Simple Google Hack

Related Stories