Tip of the hat to Jamie at intoxination.net for highlighting this.
Recently, Rupert Murdock has been concern trolling the free flow of information. In the interest of his shareholders, he has to generate profit off the interwebz.
News Corp Sites May Be Removed From Google
Adam Arnold, Sky News Online
http://news.sky.com/...
News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch has suggested the company's online newspaper pages will be invisible to Google users when it launches its new paid content strategy.
<video interview at link>
He claimed that readers who randomly reach a page via an internet search hold little value to advertisers.
When asked by Sky News Australia's political editor David Speers why News Corp has not stopped Google from finding its content, Mr Murdoch replied: "I think we will."
Referring to people finding News Corp stories via search engine websites, he said: "When they click it, they get the page with the story that's in our paper.
"Who knows who they are or where they are. They don't suddenly become loyal readers of our content."
He then goes on to complain about how no one is making mad money in media
anymore. How serious is he about Google? Not very, robots can't tell lies.
At least not these simple guys:
Rupert Murdoch Really Is A Moron
jamie, intoxination.net
http://www.intoxination.net/...
When a search engine goes to a website it reads a file called robots.txt. This is like an instruction manual for search engines on what to search and not to search. You can view my robots.txt file here.
So what does the robots.txt file on foxnews.com say?
User-agent: *
Disallow: /printer_friendly_story
Disallow: projectslivestream
#
User-agent: gsa-crawler
Allow: /printer_friendly_story
Allow: /google_search_index.xml
Allow: /google_news_index.xml
Allow: /*.xml.gz
#
Sitemap: http://www.foxnews.com/...
Sitemap: http://www.foxnews.com/...
Well look at that. Not only is Fox allowing Google, but they are giving specific directions to Google to read files and index those items.
If Rupert Murdock is serious now, he can disallow all The Google. Right now, this would take a minute tops to change on the server. You could do it in notepad.
Again, here is the link to allow Google to index Foxnews.com for Google News, the very thing Murdock is huffing and puffing about.
Either Murdock has a profound misunderstanding of how the internet actually works, or he has complete morans working for him. Either way, here is where Foxnews.com gets put below PuppetShow.
After review their site for any other antics, I spotted this:
Source of: http://www.foxnews.com/
<script></script>
<script>
GS_googleAddAdSenseService("ca-pub-2806342013516770");
GS_googleEnableAllServices();
</script>
Looks like we got another dissatisfied Google AdSense customer on our hands. Murdock probably thought he would be making billions like with his dead tree media, and has to much overhead to just be making millions. Let's also remember Murdock bought MySpace, another billion dollar machine, if dollars were made out of free MySpace templates.
So it looks like his sneaky plan to make billions again is to swipe Google completely off the site, turning it into a shuttered cabin, back off in the deep woods. Nothing more than a paid newsletter crafted by defunct Repugasaurs, refusing to evolve, sent out direct mail over the intertubez to an ever shrinking pool of subscribers.
One can understand Murdocks complaint of the underwhelming revenue generated by AdSense. Instead of just changing the revenue model at FoxNews.com, he is throwing out one of the very view channeled search spouts for target users.
When someone comes to Foxnews.com from Google News, they have already been filtered by:
- Users who use news portals
- Users who have searched for a topic for which Foxnews.com has content
- The user, realizing it is Foxnews.com, for reasons beyond me, clicks through to read Foxnews.com's content on Foxnews.com. They are either fans of Fox News's infotainment, or someone who is coming yell angrily at their computers.
I will grant that users arriving at Foxnews.com users from a basic searches from google.com or any other lesser engine home pages results in a herd of punters. Google News and other news aggregate sites generate quality.
News aggregate sites are just a humble attempt to channel by topic the enormous amount of news data the information age generates. The point Murdock is missing is that news aggregate sites act like a viewer's guide to what the news sites are producing. Just think old school cable guide, came weekly.
Google News is instantaneous and always.
By disallowing Google News and other news aggregate, Murdock will remove Foxnews.com from the channel guide and solely be left with people who randomly flip channels, the very users he despised the most.
He didn't even throw out the bathwater when he tossed the baby out the window. And you know what, a dingo ate his baby.
Prepaying to see content site unseen does not work on the intertubez. That genie got out of the bottle in the '90s. Murdock should realize that fair use content on news aggregate sites are the cover of a newspaper on a newstand.
But he won't, he is just an old man yelling at clouds.