Wow, the Washington Post is now ignoring Google's cloaking rules and putting up their paywall even when clicking from Google if you've gone over their "free article limit" for the month. I've reported them to Google, here's hoping they get deindexed.
That happens if you visit the article first from your browser and then use the google-hack to try to get around it. If you really visit the site fresh from Google, you get the article.
I just tested. I know I'm over my WaPo limit, but I could pull up the article from Google, since I hadn't gone to it before.
That's more targeted cloaking, but cloaking nonetheless. I mean of course I can get around it by clearing WaPo cookies but that isn't the point. I just hate that these large sites think they can do whatever they want - and for the most part they get away with it.
They're flagrantly violating Google's rules. That's their choice, but the penalty is deindexing. Additionally, HN has a rule against posting links to sites that use paywalls without workarounds.
Do Google's rules really say that you must be able to read an article you've already found by clicking an index result? Or only that if you first find an article via Google you must be able to read it?
The rules say that they can't show Google one thing and users something else. If the content they showed to Google for this page was "subscribe today!" that would be fine, but that of course isn't what they showed to Google because a search result for this headline comes back with a link to the fully described article. That's the very definition of cloaking.
Technically, users are seeing the same thing if they actually come from Google. Paying for things that have value is a good thing, because otherwise those companies creating that content wouldn't exist. Plenty of other companies too if you'd rather get free content.
