[fooey]

The problem with requiring an account to view content is doing so removes your content entirely from Google, and probably from most social media snippet generators.

Google will only include your content in their search results if the user can see your content. The "metered paywall" trick is a loophole to get around that.

If you put all your content behind a paywall, you're siloing yourself off from the entire rest of the internet, at least as far as discoverability goes.

[joegahona]

> Google will only include your content in their search results if the user can see your content.

That's not true for the WSJ.

[creato]

They seem to allow enough of their pages to appear to enable Google to see it. I can always see the first few sentences and the titles of WSJ articles, that's probably what google can see too.

[joegahona]

I don't think it's that -- the amount shown to Google isn't enough to provide any kind of meaningful SEO. My guess is WSJ has something worked out with Google.

[Spivak]

> The "metered paywall" trick is a loophole to get around that.

Do keep in mind that this isn't so much a loophole, but an agreement that Google made with publishers so that they could stay ranked on Google. In the wake of this they might reach a different agreement.

If Google had a setting for "I am a subscriber to x,y,z -- please include them in my results" I would be so happy. I want to tell Google that I'm a Red Hat subscriber and want their KB articles first.