Murdoch may start blocking Google
November 14th, 2009 by Andreas from Xavier Media®Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation where newspapers like The Sun, Wall Street Journal and The Times are included, says that he's planning on removing the newspapers content from search engines like Google.
The goal is to start charging for content in these newspapers and therefore the content should not show up in Google and Google News because Murdoch is claiming that one-time visitors are of low value to him and the advertisers.
If they want to start charging for their content and if they also succeed that's fantastic from a business perspective for them, but is it really the right way to go to get excluded from Google?
Today these newspapers got a strong brand since most people have seen their printed news papers and therefore people are also visiting their online versions as well. They also get one-time visitors from search engines like Google. Most of them may just read one article, but every now and then they may get a new subscriber to their paper version or an online faithful returning reader.
Since the printed news papers are in a decline, they will have less and less paying subscribers for the printed version and that will also weaken their brand. In other words the online version will be more important from a brand perspective.
If they then exclude themselves from search engines, will they then get new paying subscribers? How will people be able to find them? They will simply just have to spend more on advertising to recruit new subscribers, which may be expensive.
Is it really the right way to go when you start charging for content to get excluded from search engines? I don't think so, they just have to learn how to use search engines and free content to recruit paying customers for their premium paid service.
What do you think?
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November 23rd, 2009 at 6:11 am
From what I can understand is Microsoft is paying some companies to take their content off of Google's search engines, in hopes of getting more business from the "big online publishers" getting ranked in searches for Bing/Microsoft… I think people who like to read the written word of the newspaper will continue to buy the paper. But if anyone can buy their way out of something or buy anything that w ould be Murdoch. I guess we will see. Good post/with good info. jj
.-= jj-momscashblog´s last blog ..Make Money for the Holidays with Affiliate Marketing =-.
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:49 pm
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