Google Gives a Helping Hand to Online Publications By Giving Up on the First Click Free Rule

News in a newspaper, on a mobile app, and on a tablet

Google helps online publishers by removing the first click free rule

Most online publishers despise the popular first click free rule, as it made them lose subscribers and suffer financial losses. Now, Google decided to drop this rule, and found a way to help these publications gather subscriptions and still maintain their prominence among other search results.

Google gives up on the first click free rule

A recent blog post from Google officially announced the company was dropping the first click free rule. This rule forced publishers to offer three of their articles for free every day, so that the search engine would boost them among the other results. However, publishers aren’t big fans of this rule as, over time, it came to affect their revenue.

Google understood this method wasn’t helping publications, so it decided to adopt a more flexible approach. This new model will allow each publisher to make its own decision, and decide how many free articles per day it wants to offer for the readers. The possible ‘customers’ get the chance to see a small sample before deciding to subscribe, but publications are no longer forced to offer too much of their content for free.

The tech giant will focus on improving subscription models for publications

Google wants to add some more features, apart from the removal of the first click free rule. The company will soon adopt a model which will ease the subscription process. Given all its resources, Google will make it possible for people to subscribe through a single click, and then get unlimited access everywhere, including the website itself, the special app of the publisher, Google News, or through a search.

Giving up on the first click free rule is one of the best choices Google could make. Focusing on a better subscription models is extremely helpful for online publications, and the trials performed with several online news giants have proven successful.
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Bio
Latest Posts

Karen Jackson

Karen Jackson has always been passionate about technology. All the way through high-school she immersed herself in computers and web-design. Her ambitious nature helped her become a pro in Adobe Photoshop only by watching online videos and working with the program herself. This is also the program that she mostly uses in the creation of websites at her work-place. Technological innovation and gadgets that push the boundaries of what we are comfortable with have always fascinated her, so expect to see some weird gadget reviews coming from her.