We already know that Rupert Murdoch is planning to launch a paid content strategy sometime next year but in a recent Sky News interview he went one step further and said that they would be blocking Google from indexing content from their websites.
Some papers might do well by charging for content but surely charging for content and blocking Google is a step too far. How would people find the content to buy in the first place without search engines?
Murdoch claimed that readers who randomly reach a page via search have little value to advertisers. Asked by Sky News political editor David Speers why News hasn’t therefore made its sites invisible to Google, Murdoch replied: “I think we will.â€
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
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This is another interesting development in the ongoing battle about free online news. From previous events it is clear that Rupert Murdoch does not like the idea of free news, and will do everything he can to start the process of charging for it.
I’m not surprised that he is suggesting this next step of completely block Google from finding news stories in the near future. Whether these will come back to hurt him is another matter.
It’s clear with the ongoing decline of physical paper sales that online news is becoming ever more important, and with the advent of more PDA’s and portable readers this will continue. I wonder how long it will be until the first major news corporation starts charging for content.
Will be interesting to see the subscription model.
Sound like Rupert has the analytic’s to back up what he’s saying. Random traffic doesn’t convert for advertisers. No long tail in news stories. I’m probably in the minority but I actually find it refreshing that they’re looking at the traffic from an advertisers point of view.
“readers who randomly reach a page via search” – would love to know where the random element comes in to qualified searches for information…
Link building suicide.
I like what Murcdoch does with his Fox News network. But his way off in his views of the Internet and he is going to fail miserably with his new “Paid Content” plan. The difference in the quality of content between his News Outlets and others such as the BBC is not great enough to warrant you and I to pay for his.
Now if he can create that difference of quality and make his media that much better than everyone else, than I can see it working. But fighting against the search engine (google, msn etc.) is only going to prove failure at the end of the day.
Cut your nose off to spite your face comes to mind.
Advertising revenue is News Corps biggest revenue stream by reducing access to your Sites will reduce revenues.
Signed Carl Barron Chairman of agpcuk
Readers will just go somewhere else unless the content value is that superior. Murdoch must know something the rest of us don’t if he is going to try this. This sure seems a good way to stunt one’s growth.
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Its really hard to get enough traffic without search engine help but let see what happens to the Murdoch site.
More comments from tag44Truly breathtaking arrogance.
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