
If The WSJ.com Says Goodbye To Google, It Will lose 25 Percent Of Its Traffic  - transburgh
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/09/if-the-wsj-com-says-goodbye-to-google-it-will-also-say-goodbye-to-25-percent-of-its-traffic/
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DanielStraight
That 25 percent of their current traffic comes from Google does not
necessitate that they will lose 25 percent of their traffic if they block
Google.

There are numerous reasons why this is true, and I'll give some of them, but
the basic point is that nothing is that simple.

1\. What percent of that Google traffic is coming from "I'm feeling lucky"
hits by just typing "wsj" or "wall street journal" into the address bar?
Presumably the people doing this could figure out how to find wsj.com without
this feature.

2\. What percent of that traffic is accidental search bar queries for wsj.com
instead of address bar queries? I do this all the time, and once you're at the
Google results, it's quicker to just click the link there.

3\. How much traffic will be _gained_ by blocking Google? It would be silly to
ignore the fact that since this will be a big decision, people might check out
wsj.com just to see how things are going since the Google block. People may
also be impressed with the courage and more likely to trust and use wsj.com in
the future.

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roundsquare
_Never mind that in order to get people to pay for content, they first have to
be able to find it._

For new sites maybe... but the WSJ is well known, has a huge user base and
will probably continue to for some time.

