The other day, Danny Sullivan of Google went back and forth with the SEO community on why Google does not want to add paywall content labels to publisher sites that require you to pay to see the content. For a user, it can be frustrating to go to an article from a Google search and see you have to pay to see that content. But from Google's perspective, Google wants to promote paid journalism.
Plus, as Danny said, it is often not 100% clear if the content is paid or not for every article or every user. So it isn't always a smart idea just to label results as paywalled or not. This is not a new topic, we covered it last March where Google said it won't be hiding paywalled content in Google News or Google Search.
Danny Sullivan added yesterday on Twitter "It's easy to say put a label on such content so people can easily skip over it. But that also means people might easily skip over important content." He then pointed folks to the flexible sampling Google News options.
Dejan wrote an extension that adds the label, but it isn't always 100% accurate:
Since Google won't label paywall content in their search results we made a simple Chrome extension for it. I recognise the value news publishers provide and their need to generate revenue, but I believe Google users should be informed and given a choice: https://t.co/NFHAguS1Z4 pic.twitter.com/aCReqps9Zz
— DEJAN (@dejanseo) August 3, 2020
That's what we try to do in Search, point to great content. Some content may involved payment, such as you found a physical object you want, like a pair of shoes -- you don't expect us to say "Sorry, if you go to this page, you'll actually have to *buy* the shoes"....
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 3, 2020
Products have values. That's why those who make products may charge for their products. News is a product. Some news producers charge if you want to read their product. That's a choice people can make or not.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 3, 2020
I don't get suggesting a paywall notice is "fishy" when (such as in this example) there's nothing said that the article is free. That's your assumption, based on how online news had often been. It has rapidly and widely changed since then.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 3, 2020
That takes me full circle back to what I said before:https://t.co/t5Y2bPIWRv
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 4, 2020
Again, I understand the desire for a label. I did already pass it along. It's not the first time this has been raised. I just hope maybe this causes a little more thoughtfulness about the question...
What do you all think? I mean, here is Google trying to serve more than just the searcher but the larger ecosystem.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
