Can Google read content/see links on subscription sites?
-
If an article is published on The Times (for example), can Google by-pass the subscription sign-in to read the content and index the links in the article?
Example: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/property/overseas/article4245346.ece
In the above article there is a link to the resort's website but you can't see this unless you subscribe. I checked the source code of the page with the subscription prompt present and the link isn't there.
Is there a way that these sites deal with search engines differently to other user agents to allow the content to be crawled and indexed?
-
Hey Matt,
The best way to tell what the news organization or site is using is to turn off javascript or view the google cache to determine how Google "sees" the page.
This article is using the second option in the article I mentioned - snippets. Here is what the article has to say about that:
"If you prefer this option, please display a snippet of your article that is at least 80 words long and includes either an excerpt or a summary of the specific article." -
Thanks Dan, it doesn't look like the example article is using first click free. So I guess the answer is no, Google can't read the hidden content in this example?
-
Great question! Yes, Google has an effective way to deal with this since 2007. The three ways they deal with this include first click free, subscription designation, and then disallowing content. Here is their official support article on it:
https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en
Here is a quote from the help article:
"To summarize, we will crawl and index your site to the extent that you allow Googlebot to access it. In order to provide the best possible user experience and help more users discover your content, we encourage you to try First Click Free. If you prefer to limit access to your site to subscribers only, we will respect your decision and show a “subscription” label next to your links on Google News."Here is what Matt Cutts said about it in an interview with Search Engine Land:
"First Click Free originated with Google News, but you can use the same way of handling content in web search (show the same page to users and Googlebot, then if the user clicks to read a different article, then you can show them the registration or pay page). Because the same page is presented to users and to Googlebot, it’s not cloaking. So First Click Free is a great way if you have premium content to surface it in Google’s web index without cloaking. Hope that makes sense."It is possible to allow the Googlebot to access the content and simultaneously NOT provide it for free to non-subscribers. The above help article above should answer all of your questions. Hope this helps!
-
I would say no. The content of the article other than what is seen is not in the source code. They could be showing something different to Google, but if they did it would be against Google's terms of service. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google crawling 200 page site thousands of times/day. Why?
Hello all, I'm looking at something a bit wonky for one of the websites I manage. It's similar enough to other websites I manage (built on a template) that I'm surprised to see this issue occurring. The xml sitemap submitted shows Google there are 229 pages on the site. Starting in the beginning of December Google really ramped up their intensity in crawling the site. At its high point Google crawled 13,359 pages in a single day. I mentioned I manage other similar sites - this is a very unusual spike. There are no resources like infinite scroll that auto generates content and would cause Google some grief. So follow up questions to my "why?" is "how is this affecting my SEO efforts?" and "what do I do about it?". I've never encountered this before, but I think limiting my crawl budget would be treating the symptom instead of finding the cure. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks! *edited for grammar.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brettmandoes0 -
What are risks people are seeing with Widget links?
This September, Matt Cutts announced a new crackdown on widget links. But they clearly still work so it's a matter of scale and usage in IMO. Years ago I started recommending changing links within widgets to use branded anchor text instead of keyword rich anchor text so as not to create an unusual amount of keyword focused anchor text. It's also clearly more natural. So far this has been working very well. The new warning is concerning and I recognize the "best practice" according to Google would be to no-follow these links, but I'm not quite ready to do this unless a risk of unrecoverable penalty is apparent. My thoughts are it's a matter of scale. If there are tens of thousands of widget links and they dominate the link profile that would be a serious matter. If there are only thousands of widget links and they are a small part of the total link profile it is much less of a concern. Does anyone have any direct experience with getting warnings on this matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Envoke-Marketing1 -
Does Google index language flags/links in header, even if only 1 is visible at a time?
Hi, I want to pass link juice from my English website to my other languages. Does Google index language flags/links in header? Only 1 flag is visible at a time, and from what i´ve read, Google does not index content that is not visible to the user without clicks, like content behind tabs. I´m guessing language drop downs could fall under the same category as well...? Any knowledge on this... thank you for your time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidetoiceland0 -
Can links be hidden?
I was wondering if anyone can help me with some advice on agency work. We have just employed a new SEO agency to conduct work on one of our websites. I took a look on OSE and GWT to see if we had any new links since the agency started working (1 month ago) but there's was nothing new. When l asked for an update as to what link building efforts had been completed last month, l was told they don't give out a list of links as it could compromise the agencies techniques. They told me that they use software to hide links form link aggregators so that our competitors don't know what we are doing. Can anybody confirm that such software exists or is this agency just taking us for a ride? If there is such a software, could this not hinder what links the search engines could see? Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobSchofield0 -
Wrong titles in site links
Hello fellow marketers, I have found this weird thing with our website in the organic results. The sitelinks in the SERP shows wrong written text. As in grammatically incorrect text. My question is where does Google get the text from? It is not the page title as we can see it. kKsFv0X.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | auke18101 -
Strange situation - Started over with a new site. WMT showing the links that previously pointed to old site.
I have a client whose site was severely affected by Penguin. A former SEO company had built thousands of horrible anchor texted links on bookmark pages, forums, cheap articles, etc. We decided to start over with a new site rather than try to recover this one. Here is what we did: -We noindexed the old site and blocked search engines via robots.txt -Used the Google URL removal tool to tell it to remove the entire old site from the index -Once the site was completely gone from the index we launched the new site. The new site had the same content as the old other than the home page. We changed most of the info on the home page because it was duplicated in many directory listings. (It's a good site...the content is not overoptimized, but the links pointing to it were bad.) -removed all of the pages from the old site and put up an index page saying essentially, "We've moved" with a nofollowed link to the new site. We've slowly been getting new, good links to the new site. According to ahrefs and majestic SEO we have a handful of new links. OSE has not picked up any as of yet. But, if we go into WMT there are thousands of links pointing to the new site. WMT has picked up the new links and it looks like it has all of the old ones that used to point at the old site despite the fact that there is no redirect. There are no redirects from any pages of the old to the new at all. The new site has a similar name. If the old one was examplekeyword.com, the new one is examplekeywordcity.com. There are redirects from the other TLD's of the same to his (i.e. examplekeywordcity.org, examplekeywordcity.info), etc. but no other redirects exist. The chances that a site previously existed on any of these TLD's is almost none as it is a unique brand name. Can anyone tell me why Google is seeing the links that previously pointed to the old site as now pointing to the new? ADDED: Before I hit the send button I found something interesting. In this article from dejan SEO where someone stole Rand Fishkin's content and ranked for it, they have the following line: "When there are two identical documents on the web, Google will pick the one with higher PageRank and use it in results. It will also forward any links from any perceived ’duplicate’ towards the selected ‘main’ document." This may be what is happening here. And just to complicate things further, it looks like when I set up the new site in GA, the site owner took the GA tracking code and put it on the old page. (The noindexed one that is set up with a nofollowed link to the new one.) I can't see how this could affect things but we're removing it. Confused yet? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0 -
Doubt of multi country/language site
Hi ! We are building a site that is going to be available in some countrys with the same language (spanish), and we have some doubts about whih is the best way to do it. Option 1) Subdomains: Example; españa.mydomain.com , mexico.mydomain.com (the problem here is that there are some problems with linkbuilding with subdomains) Option 2) Language folders: Example; mydomain.com/es/es mydomain.com/es/mx (the problem here is that the prestige of the category in the url is going to be in 3rd position, example: mydomain.com/es/es/category and is not recommended for SEO) Option 3) Country domains Example; mydomain.es<a></a> mydomain.mx (the link building is going to be much more, cause we have to multipliate the links that we need ffor being in a good position with the diferent domains of each country) I am not sure of which one is the best option, what do you think? The only thing I am sure is to use te TAG: rel="alternate" hreflang="x" for not having duplicate content, because index and categories are going to be the same, the only thing that is going to change is the products of each country. Looking forward to your suggestions! Thanks, Regards Exequiel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoExpertos0 -
Can this site be optimised?
I have been told that because of the technology this site was developed with it cannot be changed for example urls title and meta tags cannot be changed. why is that and what other types of sites also cannot be changed. http://www.alliedpickfords.com/Pages/Landing.aspx For example i have been told alot of online stores cannot be optimised because the urls change every time some one goes to the page therefor you cant lionk to a certain page is that true and what is the way around it if any.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | duncan2740