I'm not sure what the solution is, but paywalled articles in search results are bad. If they want to be indexed they should have to offer that same indexed content to anyone browsing the index.
getting all journalism for free isn't sustainable though
I guess it might be a catch twenty two. Low quality -> low income -> low quality, but the sadness of such a dynamic does not make me want to pay for an inferior service.
If I went to a public water fountain and found that someone had turned it into a coca cola dispensing machine, I wouldn't be happy and wouldn't pay to use it.
"Journalists" creating pay walls, using SEO tactics to push their articles into my search results, and then trying to extract rent don't deserve money.
If the search results are full of paywalled articles that claim to have text relevant to my query, but won't show me the article because publishers are trying to extract money from me, the publishers of those articles have made my task harder and shouldn't be rewarded. This is a form of spam.
For Google, they have made a product decision about how to treat paywalled content. They don’t care. It hurts the user experience but the days when Google cared about improving their search experience are long gone.
And sometimes the answer is behind a paywall. It's not spam at all. On the contrary, spam is always free.
When this happens, I will continue to pretend to be google to access the content they are pushing. If publishers want to change this behavior they could try not letting Google index it, so I don't need to see it in my search results.
For other users, they see value in having paywalled results if they are the best results, because they do not have a block against paying for content.
If you for example search for a movie on Google, they'll show you paid options to watch it on streaming services or rent it from streaming services. That's good and what should be expected from a search engine.
Paying for stuff is how the world works. If a restaurant boasts about having the nicest steaks, you're not going to get a free steak just to be sure that it's good.
But I really think it is time for a better way to pay for content and articles instead of having to subscribe to each source.
It's like if a friend of yours takes you to a nice Mexican place. Why would you expect to get a burrito al Pastor to eat for free, just because you eat for free when you visit relatives? Nobody said it would be free.
Google does advertise that they index based on the same content that's available to anyone viewing the page, and has policies against presenting a different version of the page to their crawler versus what you're showing to visitors.
Should Google also stop indexing Facebook, since Facebook puts a login wall for people to access their content? Should YouTube (ie Google) ban movie trailers, since it's just a tease for paywalled movies? The iTunes store let people listen to 30 seconds of a song before purchasing at the paywall. Was that wrong?
Yes - I thought they already did? (I know LinkedIn edges around this by putting up a login wall only if you have a cookie showing that you'd logged in previously).
> Should YouTube (ie Google) ban movie trailers, since it's just a tease for paywalled movies? The iTunes store let people listen to 30 seconds of a song before purchasing at the paywall. Was that wrong?
A free sample of a paid thing is fine if everyone knows that's what it is. It's when you bait-and-switch by offering something that seems like it's free to start with that it's a problem. Like imagine showing a movie in the town square and then 10 minutes in you pause it and tell everyone they need to buy a ticket or leave.
Just checked, Google still indexes Facebook and puts relevant results on top. If you're not logged in you can't continue.
Should Google Maps remove businesses that charge for their products and services from their search results as well?
If by clicking on the thing it does not have the content I searched for (how am I even certain I get it when I pay you?) I would call that result bad.
If you want to charge for stuff that's great, I recommend it, and if you want to give out a free sample or an index that's great, but it should be the same to all comers.