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Changes in First Click Free

Tuesday, December 01, 2009 at 9:02 AM

Webmaster level: intermediate

We love helping publishers make their content available to large groups of readers, and working on ways to make the world's information useful and accessible through our search results. At the same time, we're also aware of the fact that creating high-quality content is not easy and, in many cases, expensive. This is one of the reasons why we initially launched First Click Free for Google News and Google Web Search -- to allow publishers to sell access to their content in general while still allowing users to find it through our search results.

While we're happy to see that a number of publishers are already using First Click Free, we've found that some who might try it are worried about people abusing the spirit of First Click Free to access almost all of their content. As most users are generally happy to be able to access just a few pages from these premium content providers, we've decided to allow publishers to limit the number of accesses under the First Click Free policy to five free accesses per user each day. This change applies to both Google News publishers as well as websites indexed in Google's Web Search. We hope that this encourages even more publishers to open up more content to users around the world!

Questions and answers about First Click Free

Q: Do the rest of the old guidelines still apply?
A: Yes, please check the guidelines for Google News as well as the guidelines for Web Search and the associated blog post for more information.

Q: Can I apply First Click Free to only a section of my site / only for Google News (or only for Web Search)?
A: Sure! Just make sure that both Googlebot and users from the appropriate search results can view the content as required. Keep in mind that showing Googlebot the full content of a page while showing users a registration page would be considered cloaking.

Q: Do I have to sign up to use First Click Free?
A: Please let us know about your decision to use First Click Free if you are using it for Google News. There's no need to inform us of the First Click Free status for Google Web Search.

Q: What is the preferred way to count a user's accesses?
A: Since there are many different site architectures, we believe it's best to leave this up to the publisher to decide.

(Please see our related blog post for more information on First Click Free for Google News.)

The comments you read here belong only to the person who posted them. We do, however, reserve the right to remove off-topic comments.

11 comments:

Kami said...

Can you please point me to the instructions that describe how to limit FCF to 5 clicks per user per day?

Thanks.

ricky said...

is this 5 click stuff gonna change my ability to read all my new on google news as i have been doing?
will it change on my droid?

gregoirederdc said...

What will change when using Google Reader ?

streets said...

Will you be giving registered Google users the ability to filter out such news sources?

I hope so...

RedCardinal said...

I really wish it wasn't you who posted John, but I gotta say it - so cloaking is now only bad if you're not a media company?

I don't want to see any content in Google SERPs that lead me to something other than what appears in that SERP. How do I opt out of seeing anything that might lead to a cloaked challenge?

Webmistress said...

paid content goes well beyond newspapers. i work for a publisher of highly specialized technical reference material. our audience has been dwindling as existing customers retire and their replacements don’t know we exist. when they find us, they immediately subscribe, but getting in the face of the googling generation is the battle. they don't think of books or subscriptions at all - only of search. FCF is a good avenue for this, but every click, or 5 clicks, is simply too many for reference material – you could get by without a subscription forever. because the material is highly technical and specialized, it is extremely expensive to produce, so advertising models simply do not work.

admittedly, i'm a googler and seldom think about buying a book for programming resources as there is more than enough high quality free material on the web. i used to share the opinion of my fellow programmers that the publishing industry was just ignorant, but I think you’ll find that perhaps the geek community is just as ignorant about how valuable, rare and difficult to market high quality information really is in some markets, especially when competing with seemingly infinite low-grade information from search engines.

Otto said...

Can Google please provide me a way to block any sites using FCF from my search results?

Nothing annoys me more than clicking through to some site to see some content, and then getting hit with a paywall when trying to explore that site further.

I'd rather Google simply not show me these sites at all, as if they're going to restrict their content using such a policy, I'd prefer not to give them any of my business.

Adam Olsen said...

I'd like a filter too. Paywalls drive me batty (and the ones I encounter are NOT the original source, the ones that'd need income to support it.)

M said...

Why, in this one industry is Google caring so much to appease the publishers? Their business model need help, which is the root of the issue. Attempts at band-aids like this are not good for the user.

If these news sources would suffer a lack of traffic from the majority of web users that they would probably change their tune fairly quickly and start to look at other ways to generate the revenue they need to keep the lights on.

Please, at least give us users an ability to filter out sources that charge for access to content.

toddlorensinclair said...

So the paid content gets a filter ... how about a preference options for users to omit all "first click free" content in google news.

I mean it should work both ways right?

Samarth Bhargava said...

The 'First Click Free' program is fundamentally flawed. The guideline to use 'referer' creates a BIG security hole which can never be plugged. Yes, you can make it difficult for users to exploit it, but it can never be too difficult. The updated guideline to restrict it to 5 clicks per user is again meaningless. It is not technically possible to do so without creating a different security hole while complying with all the other guidelines.

Right now, with a simple firefox plugin configured in less than 30 seconds, it is possible to view the complete content of many websites that comply with 'First Click Free'. The user experience is same as that of paid subscribers.

Cloaking, which google portrays as evil can actually be a legitimate tool for publishers to let users know about the valuable content that is available without giving it away for free.

It is also a choice that we as google users need to make: Never knowing that a valuable piece of content exists vs knowing that it exists and if we see the value, we pay to get it.

It is high time that people understand that if they don't pay, there will be no money left to generate all the content that they wish to consume for free.