Webmaster Central (official Google blog on crawling and indexing) had posted about curious initiative yesterday. First Click Free . They urge publishers with restricted (paid) content to open it for:
- Google bot (completely)
- visitors from Google search (landing page only )
It sure benefits Google to index more high-quality content.
Does it benefit publishers? Their business model is based on restricting content, not opening it. Showing part of it is huge hole that is going to be heavily exploited for getting rest.
Does it benefit readers? Those that are looking for fast answers – probably. But personally I am not only looking for answers but for sources of them . Showing me glimpse for the sake of Google index and publisher’s promotion is not winning me.
What do you think? Would you like to end up on landing pages without being able to view rest of site while searching? Is free glimpse better than none at all?
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hummmm, I’m really not sure about that one. As you said, ending up on landing pages without being able to view the rest is somewhat not…fun I guess. I’d like Google to show a preview video of what that would look like.
@Ben
It seems more like idea than working system. Notice that they kinda push implementing it on publishers.
It seems like no harm… But such preview results may start to clutter and dominate usual ones. Google says jump and webmasters are often fast to follow. :)
Hehe yeah I agree ;) Anyway, the Google #1 priority is usually user experience.
@Ben
Playboy-themed Google home page would so improve average user’s experience… But sometimes it’s better to show restraint. :)
PS they also have money to make