

Get Free Access to Pay-Walled Content with a Simple Google Hack - kosofalla
http://lifehacker.com/5443857/get-free-access-to-pay+walled-content-with-a-simple-google-hack

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patio11
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.")

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sorbus
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 ...

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patio11
Yes -- if you do that, Google will adjust your position to "out of the index".
(It is classic cloaking.)

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joeconyers
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.

