WSJ Pulls Back On What Google Searchers Can Read For Free

Posted: 2/27/2012  |  By: Danny Sullivan | Search Engine Land

Are you used to using Google as a way around the Wall Street Journal’s paywall? Think again. The WSJ has been holding back stories available through Google’s “First Click Free” program, a move that I suspect other newspapers might soon emulate.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed that I wasn’t able to read some Wall Street Journal stories when visiting from Google. I figured this was some type of bug. But a recent case got me digging deeper: the Journal’s story about how Google created a workaround past Safari’s default privacy settings as a way of enabling +1 buttons on Google’s ads.