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they're probably doing some sort of a/b testing by selectively letting some clicks through

This is basically true ^^

Any idea what the deal is with SEO impacts of WSJ taking the idea of blocking everyone who isn't a google bot?

Mine did, which surprised me, and I did exactly the same thing.

I did the same with the same article and got paywalled from Google results.

I also checked the paywall and the old trick still works for me. Odd.