Google’s “flexible Sampling” Changes Clutter With Google’s Best Feature
Well, it looks like this is a gimmick for the curmudgeonly news addicts. Search giant Google decided to abandon its gimmick of giving free downloadable site visitors access to pay-access articles.
Here’s how Google’s Free First Click policy worked : Since 2009, users have been able to read a certain number of articles (as of 2015 there were three) per day with a publisher’s paid access if they viewed the article through a Google search. … If you’ve run out of your supply of “free” paid articles for a site like NYT, you’re out of luck until the day is up (or until you paid for your subscription). So, while you may not read all the great articles on the Internet, you can take a look at the ones that are most important to you and stay updated. Unfortunately, if you were a publisher who didn’t want their articles to be available for free and easy reading, the decision to drop the policy meant that your site’s downgrade in Google search was inevitable.
Instead, the company will now give publishers the freedom to choose the number of free articles that users can read when they find it on a Google search engine. This is called “flexible sampling,” and whether it will allow publishers to choose how many articles they will offer for free each month and which part of the article they will share before demanding payment from users.
For its part, Google is inviting publishers to offer 10 free articles per month, as well as free previews of portions of other articles, to encourage users to read them enough to pay for access. Both options also allow publishers to maintain their rankings on Google search without offering content for free.
For the typical consumer, this likely means you will read fewer features and more listings until you pay, and it is possible that publishers could severely limit the number of free articles available to users, which could lead to risk. either in an increase in the number of paid subscribers, or in an overall decrease in site traffic. As more sites use paywalls to generate income, it becomes increasingly difficult not to spend a few dollars getting news from certain popular news outlets – and really, shouldn’t we pay news outlets to run them? before your Netflix plan is next to the Wall Street Journal subscription in your monthly entertainment budget.
Google’s “Trick” to Bypass Paywalls Closes | Choose all