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Rupert Murdoch says in this video he would make News Corp’s paid content invisible from Google:
How? News Corp could add a couple of code snippets (”) to the Robot.text file to go dark to Google and other search engines.
But if you do, Google warned in July:
“Today, more than 25,000 news organizations across the globe make their content available in Google News and other Web search engines. They do so because they want their work to be found and read — Google delivers more than a billion consumer visits to newspaper Web sites each month. These visits offer the publishers a business opportunity, the chance to hook a reader with compelling content, to make money with advertisements or to offer online subscriptions. If at any point a Web publisher feels as though we’re not delivering value to them and wants us to stop indexing their content, they’re able to do so quickly and effectively.“
I added the bold for emphasis. What we have here is a bonafide Catch-22. Go Google, and get read. Shun Google, and go invisible online.
Good luck with going dark on Google, Rupert. Let me know how that works out.
He clearly forgot the 11th commandment: Thou shalt not hide from the Googlebot:
While I guess that’s Rupert’s point — and he no doubt has a lead-and-others-will-follow hope– it’s also like trying to hide from the alien ships in “War of the Worlds.”