Is it Really Crazy to Block Google?

For the Wall Street Journal it actually may make sense!

By Rich Ord · December 5, 2009 · 66 Comments

After all is said and done Rupert Murdoch may still be seen as the sly old fox that really knew best. Many bloggers and journalists have pounded the insanity of Murdoch’s suggestion that News Corp publications might strike an exclusive indexing deal with Bing and delist itself from Google’s search engine.

However, what if Murdoch was really only talking about the Wall Street Journal and not all News Corp publications? Then the idea might actually make a lot of sense.

According to Compete.com WSJ.com already receives the largest percentage of its traffic from Microsoft’ (18.74%). This is contrary to many sites which typically receive the majority of their referrals from Google, often many times more than what Microsoft delivers. Yahoo provides another 6.3% and since Bing will likely be owning Yahoo’s search business that means Microsoft is actually delivering 25% of the Wall Street Journals current traffic.

If Rupert Murdoch can get Microsoft to pay possibly as much as $50 million or more a year to lose just 11.5% of his Google traffic sent to WSJ.com the deal makes a lot of sense.

According to Hitwise Google and Google News combined deliver approximately 26% of WSJ.com visitors. However, even with this larger percentage (vs. Compete’s) Hitwise notes in a blog post why this might not be as much of a traffic loss as it appears:

Analyzing Google search terms driving traffic to the Journal, the top 100 terms accounted for over 21.6% of all Google search traffic to WSJ.com. Of that 21.6%, 13.4% were navigational or brand searches (e.g. "Wall Street Journal," "WSJ," "WSJ.com" etc…). Even if Murdoch decides to block Google, these navigational search queries will most likely remain intact.

Of the remaining 8.2%, the majority of searches were for stock quotes, and general business related searches. Most specific news related searches fill-out the long tail of search queries. While the Journal may lose traffic if it ceases to cooperate with Google the loss may be less then anticipated.

From Bing’s perspective Wall Street Journal exclusivity not only differentiates Bing from Google but it could also help change its image as a more consumer focused search engine. The Wall Street Journal is the most read business publication in the World and this deal could go a long way toward modifying Bing’s consumer image in the minds of business executives.

After all, a click resulting from a B2B oriented search term usually demands a premium price, which could help offset Bing’s cost of paying Murdoch for exclusive inclusion.

Update: Two more publishers have come out with statements indicating their possible desire to de-index from Google as well. Read more here …

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There are 66 Comments. Add Yours.

Guest
November 28, 2009 at 3:31 pm
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Most likely 99% of the WSJ profit is derived from 1% of its base readers, so I doubt they have much to loose. Anyone who needs the WSJ probably already subscribes in one form or another.

The business information is authoritative, in depth and timely –a combination you rarely find in a Google search. Besides, who would trust any news source that was SEO manipulated to rank higher in a search engine? Even if the paper could ethically justify doing something like that, I doubt they would have the time to do it. The value of news has a very short shelf life.

Maintaining the quality and making it less available on the web will only increase its value to the professional users of the journal –its real target.
Gary Cook
November 28, 2009 at 5:04 pm
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Surely a newspaper should be unbiased and aim at as many people as possible in order to get that news out to the world. Clearly Murdoch isn’t interested in news per se. I will feel no loss as I continue to Google.
Stuie
November 28, 2009 at 5:29 pm
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Why would anyone be searching for any kind of article from him? Anything that comes from WSJ and News Corp is slanted, biased and only designed to sway public opinion. “Effective Information”? How’d you come to that conclusion?

That “Sly old fox” has managed to brainwash most of America.
Guest
November 28, 2009 at 5:38 pm
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Murdoch delisting anything? and collaborations with MS are worrying!
It feels wrong. I am an enthusiastic user of all things Google (because its in the Cloud) , I pay a subscription for premium content from the Financial times. I would not keep Confidential stuff on the cloud servers (I have yet to back my cloud stuff up – I wonder should I?) I will be looking for my Bank to give me Cloud type stuff on their servers – again I would wonder If I should back up.

In other words – I like the Cloud model because it avoids having to be a systems administrator and it gets worse the more devices – I have two laptops two desk tops one net book – no doubt soon an android phone. So I’ll watch the concepts of Android and ChromeOS over the next 1/2 years.

I want a life NOT as a machine minder. MS charge and then your life is taken up with updates , upgrades S/W and H/W – So I guess one day we’ll pay for Google for the data security.

I can see that local and red top papers do not have much premium content to offer.

Google seems committed to the evolutionary model and use my activity to work out the future and support e- commerce and my education, training, seld development and information.

Sorry for stream of conciousness, but I don’t like the headline “Murdoch delisting”
Elle Fagan
November 28, 2009 at 5:44 pm
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This article made me smile – it’s like getting your favorite hotel to pay YOU for staying with them.

elle
Guest
November 28, 2009 at 6:12 pm
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What we’re seeing in this news item is the visible beginning of the end of traditional, free-to-the-user, search paradigms. Maybe the existing model worked well until the mid-90s, but today’s Google-Bing-Yahoo form of internet search — with “its WIDE array of tools and models” — has sat in the fridge well past its expiration date. It is nearly useless for its users. What’s worse, it’s expensive, obscure and useless for the vast majority of its advertisers.

Hint to Silicon Valley: there’s a huge opportunity in evolving past the dinosaurs.
Guest
November 28, 2009 at 7:01 pm
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Rupert Murdoch can go to that extremely hot place beneath the earths crust for all I care. I will never follow him. I’m staying with Google.
- Tommy Brown
  November 28, 2009 at 7:05 pm
  Reply
  
  AMEN brother, Google has brought us to the future with gmail and search engines and well heck fire everything.
Tommy Brown
November 28, 2009 at 7:03 pm
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Yeah right, who in their right mind would do that? I can tell you who.
The person that plays Mafia War Games on Facebook like me. You can learn to be “That way” by playing this game it will make you into a stradegist on all things pertaining to money, friends, gifts at the right time and much, much, more. Just remember “Tommy Told Me”

btw” ciao

RSVP: Google has done nothing but good to us all, unfriend like Microsoft who has taken us on a ride thru their terrible OS’S to say the least. Remember gmail? The email that made hotmail straighten up and fly right. Micrsoft is going the trail of AOL I believe and the reason is looking us all in the face.
Galadare
November 28, 2009 at 11:30 pm
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I don’t think it’s likely to be too much trouble for them if they opted out of Google. The Wall Street Journal was a big name even before the internet and it’s unlikely that opting out of the search engines will be anything like putting a nail in the coffin. A small fry company would have a tougher time of it, but the fact of the matter is that, as useful as the search engines are, Search Engine Optimization is not the final word in drumming up new business online.
Niels Dettenbach
November 29, 2009 at 1:45 am
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why not? If Murdoch want’s to make a deal which brings him an urgent profit on a short range, while major parts of the brand will be damaged. This is just Murdoch and his decision…

The (since many decades) well known brand “NYT” just will loose recipients and readers in the world and gives other smaller newspapers a better chance to get into the global as local markets.

The very most of the classical newspapers today have websites which aren’t really useful and interesting as they sell older articles / access to their archives, while i.e. broadcast stations and Wikis more and more give unlimited access to their archives of news or broadcasts. If they limit their access from search engines too they would be just more useless.

Internet users mainly prefer content and services which are freely available. Most internet users from emerging or third world countries are not able to pay just a dollar for an article as they mostly can’t get any credit card or even a bank account. Such users will switch to other / free available content.

hmmm,
how nice was the good old time where the most internet applications was of a more non-commercial background. But even at the times of Altavista, WebCrawler, Excite and Co. such a decision had make no sense. Yes, often we had to use different indexes to find (all) the relevant pages (or meta-crawler).

Since Google there is no real competition between the search engines anymore. Bing in his concepts faces to me just as a bad copy of google and web catalogs like Yahoo! are mainly dead because of outdated content.

I see here just another reason why we urgently need more independent indexing and search machine concepts – ideally on a open source basis – where everybody is able to run (a network of/ indexers, indexes and or search applications (frontends) if he want. There is enough unused server capacity in the world which could be used more efficiently – even to save the climate.

I didn’t understand really why one search engine with one ranking concept should be the best solution for each internet user. That makes no sense as that machine is not able to target each user preferences and his interests, cultural and ethnical background.

If someone is interested in developing a core in a open source project for such a system feel free to contact me. Just let Gooogle, Bing and Murdoch do what they assume as the best for their business. The user has to decide which content he want and which not.

Cheers,

Niels.
Mike
November 29, 2009 at 2:48 am
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This may be slightly off subject however I think it is pertinent.

Without doubt Google has the #1 slot in global search engine patronage.

With this arrives a control factor through captive audience usage that could become and possibly already is a malign filtering factor on what users can and cannot access readily or if at all.

God forbid if the Internet falls into the hands of 1 search engine and 1 desktop OS as Google proposes, that will determine search result ranking and availability, 1st page, 2nd page and so on, or no page at all.

As you know Google can ban sites and can place others so deep into the results that only the very persistent of users will bother to scroll through the many pages to find what they truly seek.

Rupert Murdoch has power, Google has power.

Abuse of power is the issue at stake here and Google is definitely no longer a truly organic search engine anymore, and shame on them for that.

As for Rupert, well he is a self made man and probably has kindred monopoly survival instincts as Google has, and I have know idea of his true motives on his current decision.

However my whole point here is that I would like Google to turn back to their grass roots and not forget where they came from.

And not forget the soul of the support from patrons in the early days when it was all Alta Vista etc.

In other words I would like to see Google become less commercially orientated and revert to being an authentic organic search entity that we old timers expect from them.

Get real Google you do not control the net, you only filter it!!!

Comment are appreciated.

Mike
Sriraj
November 29, 2009 at 3:11 am
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I recently saw a comment on TechCrunch on the same topic of blocking Google.
One guy said, Rupert is stupid. To be straight, I couldn’t disagree with that view.
Christopher Mootham
November 29, 2009 at 4:05 am
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The WSJ is about 40-something % corporate press releases anyways. They would be the last source I would use for any “effective” business information. Good riddance. Less garbage I have to sift through on Google. Any publisher who dosen’t want to disseminate his information and continue to cultivate brand affinity and brand value should follow Rupert Murdoch’s lead. Cheers
Guest
November 29, 2009 at 4:06 am
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I’ll keep my comments short and to the point – ”Rupert Murdock is a Power Hungry Lunatic” that should sum up the whole situation!
James
November 29, 2009 at 8:14 am
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Ya…. Compete.com is completely inaccurate… I wouldn’t trust a single statistic from it.
Guest
November 29, 2009 at 9:50 am
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Does Google cares about the traffic lost from WSJ?
I don’t think so.
What if people still use google to search for similar content instead and
other websites will catch this traffic by providing similar content .
Chris
November 29, 2009 at 12:21 pm
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This type of thinking – foregoing the long-term health of the business in order to capture the short term profit – is exactly what is wrong with American businesses in the global marketplace. Like it or not, the Internet (along with it’s concurrent ideals of access to information) is the future, and it will be very different from the monopoly model of the past. I sort of expected this type of behavior from Microsoft – which hasn’t shown any real innovation in computing since DOS 2.0, but rather prefers to buy out or out-litigate the competition. Murdoch’s enterprises, in contrast had (up until now I thought) embraced progress and emerging markets. Guess I was wrong. Go ahead and try to create your WSJ-Bing information “monopoly”. Within six months there will be a new start-up that will provide the same content you are trying to control, and they’ll do it cheaper, faster and better.
Guest
November 29, 2009 at 12:28 pm
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I think it is very smart. All newspapers should block both google and yahoo. Free news is not developed by google or yahoo. It is developed by highly trained and paid journalists from newspapers. Without newspapers, google news and yahoo news would not exist. Why should they get the news for free and not pay for it?
- Guest
  November 30, 2009 at 1:34 pm
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  Gee, WHO paid these highly trained journalist BEFORE Google????
  
  “They” don’t get the news for “free” . . . it is indexed to make LOCATING it easier . . . it’s like asking the Post Office to PAY YOU for listing your address . . . if a “business” decides to move off the grid, cancel it’s street address and select to receive NO MAIL, I’d say that “might” be a bad decision
  
  . . . on the other hand, judging from the radical Right Wing bias and fabrication record of Murdock properties, getting them “off the grid” is actually a BETTER thing for intelligent society in general . . .
Guest
November 29, 2009 at 1:03 pm
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This Jew Puppet sold the Iraq war for Israel to American people through his corporate like fox and he should be tried in International criminal court for war crime.

Now this puppet is promoting war with Iran through his propaganda media.

Why would anyone wan to read WSJ.Pure propaganda rag promoting corporate welfare of bankers and wallstreet bailout.All idiots who read it and invested their money was swindled off by bankers and criminals like Bernie Madoff.
Guest
November 29, 2009 at 5:50 pm
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To be a monopolist is prohibited in whole world as you know if you have power more than 30%. Who gave all rights to Google to take control of all of small business. As I know and see everytime Google has lot’s of “click” sites and most of nowadays information in search engine is a junk. Instead of giving a promotion to real small business to let them grow their business and advertising them correctly and be on Google search list, what we see is more and more click wrong websites instead. How about all this rank page? the same situation and here. All those “click’ sites are paying to be on the top by giving real people who are searchign for certain stuff the wrogn information. I would block Google for making the worse global monopoly, distroying every real good websites as banning them or making them down the list, letting be the worse competitors to other search engines…
Guest
November 29, 2009 at 6:50 pm
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Rupert Murdoch is a genius who didn’t become as successful as he is by making bad decisions. Time will show this is definitely one of his better decisions.
Freeware
November 30, 2009 at 4:23 am
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I hate it when people simply over-complicate a situation, this is real easy for me to understand – the online authorities in news want to start charging (and some already have) for people to access their content so the burning question is will people pay for the privillage? No, simple as that, they won’t. When we have fantastic content from the BBC website which is extremely unlikely to charge for content (remember this is funded from the British TV license payer already) why would any news site consider it possible to charge for the same news?
Michael Wilkinson
November 30, 2009 at 5:08 am
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Murdoch is right to decide just how people access his products,they are his after all.
Only time will tell if his decision is rght and if he loses money,after all that’s all he is interested in,the money.
Tristan
November 30, 2009 at 10:54 am
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Not sure if they realize that when people can’t find their articles using Google, they will most likely still find answers, and probably won’t switch search engines to do it. They will just find other sources with answers. It will be a huge boost for the WSJ online competition, strengthening other brands online as the WSJ paper format dies out.

And heck, maybe they’d get even more Google traffic if they did some better optimization. They don’t show up within the first 5 SERPs for “business news” except in an ad link. (but maybe that’s because of the whole de-listing deal)

Granted, Murdock has been making money for some time. I’m sure he’s got some semblance of an idea about what he’s doing.
juan
November 30, 2009 at 3:07 pm
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In my opinion…Murdock and the like are not taking advantage of being used by Google news, an international, multi language platform, if they place multi language advertisement in every single news article, editorial, etc. they will be using Google to reach more markets, generate more traffic to their sites, and their client’s sites, increase their presence in other regions of the world. Google will reign for a very long time before the ‘other’ search engines come even closer to it…thanks. And thanks for allowing us to list our site address, and just for reference, Tyloon.com is the first Online Multilingual Yellow Pages / Search Engine, try it and enjoy it…lol
AngryKid
November 30, 2009 at 7:18 pm
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I agree with CyberHodge. WSJ is a niche information source. it’s not like any regular crap paper.

What a smart move by mr. murdoch, im sure microsoft isn’t unhappy about it either.

YO UARE WRONG CATHY. DEAD WRONG.
Guest
December 1, 2009 at 5:54 pm
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If he feels that deslisting with Google’s Search Engine will help him sell newspapers, it’s up to him. However, delisting is not the greatest idea. Removing Google ad patches, however, is. Listing with the search engine does not have the prerequisite of accepting ad patches. In some cases, I think most customers would like to see clean, uncluttered web pages free of the ubiquitous Google brand, which would in effect create a neutral environment. Murdoch is also perfectly free to charge for his content. It is the capitalistic way.

I have the same problem with clutter when I click on a possible partner’s site and see nothing but Amazon ads. After my own experiences with the retailer I usually shy of participating in the sites altogether. Think of all the Yahoo users who do not like to see the Google brand all around and you would see what I mean.

I have as many as a thousand search keywords on my pages, but if people do not click on them I can never know if they looked. They can also click and not buy anything, and I would prefer it if they did, but I will still be grateful if they just look.
- Guest
  December 20, 2009 at 4:33 pm
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  He has that given right to choose what he wants, but in the long run I think the ultimate choice would be google. I for one, dont use bing or yahoo because of all the clutter -I find it very distracting, and most people would agree.
  The only real reason why Murdoch would choose Bing for traffic is because it thrusts its ads onto its costumers. Because of that I think in the end Bing & Murdochs relationship will degrade, unless Bing changes its tactics.