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Copy / paste headline into Google. Then click in from from the search results. Google Webmaster Rules require the exact same content delivered to the spider to be delivered to a search user.

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Have you tried that? It doesn't work for me any more. It definitely used to but it's not worked the last few times I've tried it.

In the past it worked best for me when I Googled the article title using Chrome in incognito mode (in case of cookies). For some reason it's never worked for me in Firefox. Most of the time it's not worth the hassle, so I don't jump through hoops anymore to read paywalled articles.

I believe they did eliminate all loopholes for one day to see how it would affect traffic and subscriptions.

I'm able to get this article but not others. I think they might be doing more cross-sectional A/B type tests along this line now, making different articles available open or closed to the google-referral-loophole. Maybe even different access to different IP blocks?

I saw either yours or a similar comment somewhere else on this topic, so I tried it again. It worked on mobile and desktop. Maybe there's something else going on for you like a browser extension that anonymizes your clicks through SERPs? (If there is such a thing) Maybe one that deletes your Referer: header.

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