

The cost of First Click Free - bdfh42
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/10/googles_web.php

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sant0sk1
Is this how Experts Exchange content is provided to click-thru Google searches
but not by direct access to the page?

If so, this might not be so great for publishers, as savvy users will just
ALWAYS access their content via Google searches.

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timcederman
WSJ does the same. It's simply done by detecting user-agent during the crawl,
and then referrer during regular use.

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Hexstream
Are you sure? I've read in the Google policies that you're supposed to serve
the same content to Googlebot as your users or you're penalized in PageRank.

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timcederman
Correct. Technically in this case they are in the clear because what people
see on Google is what they will get when they click on the link.

What is currently penalized is when you do this without checking the referrer
and show everyone a sign-up screen. That'll get you penalized in a serious
hurry.

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redorb
guessing a search for site:www.wsj.com would reveal all indexed pages
(probably pretty recently crawled too) for us to view now, thanks goog!

