Online newspapers: is it time to start blocking Google?

Paid content on the web has been a hot topic of discussion over the past few years. During the past few weeks however, we have witnessed a violent series of attacks, position taking and changes of heart on behalf of the players involved. An obvious example is Rupert Murdoch who has announced his desire to hide his sites from Google. It has been reported that negotiations are underway between Microsoft and a number of editors to ultimately enable the latter to block Google, allowing only Bing to access their websites (Microsoft is willing to pay the high price tag that goes with having exclusive content on its search engine whose market share still hasn’t made it past the 10% mark). Then along comes Google in an attempt to calm things down, reminding the newspapers of the ways in which they can optimize their use of Google and changing the rules of its “First Click Free” program.

It’s a topic that will continue to be rehashed for months to come as more and more newspapers are relying solely on advertising revenues and are therefore seeking out new means by which their content can be paid for. We can also expect that recent debates (and the massive financial losses of several newspapers) will speed up the process of change in this industry. In the meantime, how should editors who are determined to maintain a paying model behave when it comes to Google?

"First Click Free": pay content in full, or block Google

Blocking Google simply isn’t an option newspapers should be considering. We agree that many visitors redirected from Google are not necessarily as interested in the newspaper as those who visit the newspaper’s website directly, but it’s plain madness for a newspaper to willingly forego 20 to 60% (summary benchmark of several online content players) of its traffic without a solid plan. Eric Schmidt is therefore quite right in saying:

“We send online news publishers a billion clicks a month from Google News and more than three billion extra visits from our other services, such as Web Search and iGoogle. That is 100,000 opportunities a minute to win loyal readers and generate revenue—for free.”

Google will no doubt make more changes to its “First Click Free” option in the coming months since the program doesn’t offer newspapers any great advantage. Even if the number of free visits via Google is limited to 5, versus an unlimited number under the former rule, it’s still too easy for a web user to access the entire content of a newspaper without paying.

Finally, the option of offering a summary, or a preview, of paid content is currently looking like the best approach. By optimizing this content for search engines, there’s a very good chance it will be well ranked in Google even if the entire article isn’t available for free. The user can then decide whether or not he’s wiling to pay for article or register on the website.

Some fundamental changes are needed

That said, the editors are going to have to make some major changes if they want web users to pay for their content, and these changes go far beyond the decision of whether or not to block Google. With competition increasing thanks to Google having removed all barriers to becoming an editor, the latter must review their structure if they’re to come out winners in this new environment.

Let’s compare this situation to the music industry; iTunes was a solution to the industries problems, and not the industry’s demise. In fact, if it wasn’t for iTunes and the concept of making songs easily accessible at $0.99, could the industry boast several billions of dollars in online music sales today? Probably not because everyone was busy downloading their music for free, which is exactly what’s happening with online news and other online text content.

If micro-payment is to be the newspaper’s savior, editors must determine which articles the user is likely to spend $0.05, $0.10 or $0.25 on because much of the content produced by newspapers today just doesn’t make the cut. They should also act now because Google is already actively developing a micro-payment system for newspapers meaning it could cheat newspapers out of even more cash than it already has according to some.