Google Helps Publishers Erect Pay WallsGoogle Helps Publishers Erect Pay Walls

In conjunction with a Federal Trade Commission workshop exploring how journalism will survive in the Internet age, Google has decided to make it easier for publishers to erect "pay walls" that limit full-article viewing to paying subscribers.

Publishers that allow content to show up in Google Search results but then limited access to visitors could be said to be engaged in "cloaking," a form of bait-and-switch that Google disallows to protect searchers.

Google's Webmaster Guidelines state: "Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as 'cloaking.'"

To get around this, Google offers a program called First Click Free, which allows publishers to grant Google-referred searchers access to up to five pages per day before requiring a registration or subscription.

"The user's first click to the content is free, but when a user clicks on additional links on the site, the publisher can show a payment or registration request," said Josh Cohen, senior business product manager at Google, in a blog post on Monday. "First Click Free is a great way for publishers to promote their content and for users to check out a news source before deciding whether to pay."

To avoid the perception that such links are deceptive, Google will label them "subscription," so that users know they may not be allowed to view protected stories.

Google, however, warns that pay walls may limit reader interest.

"Paid content may not do as well as free options, but that is not a decision we make based on whether or not it's free," said Cohen. "It's simply based on the popularity of the content with users and other sites that link to it."

In a further step to help news publishers keep their content out of Google News but still discoverable through Google Search, Google on Tuesday announced a new Googlebot-News user agent, a way to automatically keep Google from including news content in Google News.

Google previously allowed publishers to request Google News exclusion through an online form. Google's efforts to help media companies figure out a business model strike some industry observers as needlessly servile. In a blog post, John Battelle, a publishing industry veteran who chairs the Web 2.0 Summit and has written extensively about Google, characterizes Google's moves as appeasement and slams media companies for "asking Google to do the work you can and should own yourselves!"

Nonetheless, Google, perhaps to blunt criticism about its power or ambitions, insists on playing the Good Samaritan for news publishers.

Rather than being appreciative, however, some notable news publishers have gone out of their way to be seen biting the hand that feeds them.

Google, which refers over 20% of the visitor traffic to the Wall Street Journal and even more for other publications through Google Search and Google News, has become a major focus of complaints for its largess.

Reports suggest that Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation, which owns the Wall Street Journal, has been weighing the possibility of "de-indexing" news content from Google in conjunction with a possible deal with Microsoft.

Whether or not that's just a negotiation tactic to win a bailout from Google or the government, Google continues to extend a hand to help news publishers.

In May, when the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet held hearings on the future of journalism, Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search products and user experience, suggested that craft stories like Wikipedia entries -- as constantly evolving documents rather than as a series of separate stories.

The news industry has yet to warm to that idea.

In response to a June solicitation from the the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) for ways to help publishers make money, Google in a letter promised "micropayments will be a payment vehicle available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year."

A Google spokesperson, however, subsequently said that such its micropayment plans were less concrete than its letter suggested.

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