News Corp may hide sites from search engines after paywall is erected

by Jennifer Whitehead, Brand Republic 09-Nov-09, 11:05

LONDON - Rupert Murdoch has said that once News Corp starts charging for access to its online newspapers, it will block search engines such as Google from adding its content to their search results.

Murdoch made the comments in an interview given to Sky News Australia, which is partly owned by News Corporation, which also owns The Sun, The Times and the Wall Street Journal.

The interviewer asked Murdoch if he viewed Google as stealing content, why the company didn't simply block access to the search engine. Murdoch replied: "I think we will. But that's when we start charging."

Earlier he had questioned the value of visitors to websites delivered by search engines, saying that they did not become loyal readers by clicking on one of their headlines in a news headline aggregator.

He said: "There's not enough ad revenue in the world to make all the websites profitable. We'd rather have fewer people coming to our websites but paying."

Many argue that Murdoch's determination to make people pay for content will simply mean that people will look elsewhere for news, but he hinted in the interview that News Corp could challenge the doctrine of fair use, which allows copyrighted material to be reproduced without permission under certain circumstances, saying it "could be challenged in the courts".

Last week Murdoch said that there would likely be a delay in News Corp switching over to the paid-for model.

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Comments

Jason Hunt - 09/11/2009

Seems like cutting off your nose etc etc... Surely this is the same as if NI papers blanked out all the headlines on their front pages? Why not allow Google to list his search results, but then make the paid-for nature of the content obvious. If his content is good enough, then people may pay, but if they don't even know it's there, they definitely won't.

Terry Hogan - 09/11/2009

Isn't there a proverb about a boy trying to stop a dam from bursting by sticking his fingers in the hole? And then another hole and another hole appears, and the water is coming whether he likes it or not. News Corp don't 'own' the news, they are just playing into the hands of smaller players with more nimble digital strategies.There is an army of tiny sites which can provide the news, albeit at a lower quality, but with even better immediacy. Time will tell if this is a good move, I suspect it is backwards step for us all. It is interesting though, because as a site grows, search engines are very important. Once the brand has grown so big that it becomes the search engine- who should be paying whom?