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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Murdoch to 'block Google searches'
Jack Megaw, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Pittsburgh | PA | America | Posted: 7:45 PM on 11.09.09 |
->> Media mogul Rupert Murdoch seems set to block google searches of the content of his media outlets.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8351331.stm
Personally I feel that this is unfair and against what journalism represents - to inform the public. I'd be interested to hear some opinions on this.
-Jack |
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Michael Ip, Photographer
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New York | NY | USA | Posted: 8:08 PM on 11.09.09 |
| ->> I think he is going shoot himself in his foot. It is going to drive down traffic to his sites and he will lose advertising dollars. |
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Mark Peters, Photographer
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Highland | IL | USA | Posted: 8:16 PM on 11.09.09 |
->> He's moving to a fee based subscription service - as such it would make sense to block the content. I don't see where blocking the headlines makes sense. I would think he would want the headlines to drive you to the site, where upon you would have to pay to read the story.
I presume this is also a shot across the bow of Google to try to get them to license the content rather than using it gratis. |
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Jim Comeau, Photo Editor, Photographer
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David Seelig, Photographer
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Hailey | ID | USA | Posted: 10:53 PM on 11.09.09 |
| ->> He free to try what he wants to do to make his business work if it keeps more people employed great. As all news media employment is down everyone should be trying anything they can think of to stay in business. If he finds a way to make more money so will other parts of the media. |
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David Harpe, Photographer
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Louisville | KY | USA | Posted: 12:07 AM on 11.10.09 |
| ->> Not a smart move. For current, recent news it's not a big deal. But for past articles and archival information, it's really dumb. You can't expect people to search google for an old story and then go, oh yeah, I'll also have to hit the newscorp sites. They'll do what they do now - click on the first few hits in the search results from google...none of which will be on a Murdoch site. |
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Nick Doan, Photographer, Assistant
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Scottsdale | AZ | USA | Posted: 9:45 AM on 11.10.09 |
->> Can someone explain to me why his reasoning is unsound, when in a discussion on this board not too long ago said that the AP shot itself in the foot for not charging for their content to yahoo and google?
http://www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=34519 |
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David Harpe, Photographer
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Louisville | KY | USA | Posted: 10:05 AM on 11.10.09 |
->> Charging for content is not a bad thing. But you have to get people to your site before you can get them to pay. By excluding your site from the most popular search and research tool on the planet, you cut down on visitors to your site - and with it, the potential to monetize those visitors.
It's easy and straightforward to seed search engines with content snippets to draw people to the site, holding back on the details enough to encourage them to pay/join. A lot of news sites have screwed up because they don't hold back enough...they load their entire story copy into the RSS feed instead of just the first or second sentence in the story. Lots of sites do this...and it's probably because they just don't understand how their content management system works...or don't have enough resources to customize it appropriately.
A far better approach would be to SEO the heck out of your snippets area and make Google drive traffic to you. Think about it. If you do it right, your sites show up in the top Google search results for any timely news item. If your sites keep showing up in search results and people keep hitting the pay-for-more wall, they'll get the idea that maybe it would be worth a few bucks to subscribe.
The other option is to go it solo and drive traffic some other way....which means advertising. If you want the web to see you, you'll probably have to pay Google for AdWords buys. Murdoch has a media empire so he can drive traffic other ways, but it's still a cost no matter how you look at it. Ultimately no matter how much traffic you can drive other ways, you could still do better with Google. You just have to be smart about it. |
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Mark Loundy, Photo Editor
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San Jose | CA | USA | Posted: 3:42 PM on 11.17.09 |
->> Nick,
The AP DOES charge Yahoo.
--Mark |
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Brian Smith, Photographer
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Miami Beach | Florida | United States | Posted: 3:22 PM on 11.23.09 |
| ->> I like that someone (aside from the WSJ) has finally found the balls to charge for web content, but I'm surprised he's blocking Google searches. I'd be inclined to allow the pages to index, but charge to enter the site. |
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Nigel Farrow, Photographer
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Mark Loundy, Photo Editor
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San Jose | CA | USA | Posted: 10:31 AM on 12.02.09 |
->> Google is NOT limiting free news access. They are offering a tool to publishers for limiting the number of clicks that visitors can make on their sites for free.
This is a per-site tool and completely in the hands of each site owner.
That said: Paywalls are symptoms of old-world thinking. Mr. Murdoch is simply lacking the vision necessary for him to see it.
Yes, there are exceptions for specialized content like the Wall Street Journal. But general news sites -- no.
The smart people in this space think that Murdoch is completely off-base. Steve Yelvington is one of the smartest: http://www.yelvington.com/content/thinking-about-paywall-read-first
--Mark |
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