Wall Street Journal’s Google traffic drops 44% after pulling out of First Click Free

In February, The Wall Street Journal stopped participating in a program allowing Google visitors to bypass its paywall. The publication has now discovered, as was predicted, that it no longer gets as much traffic from Google.

In an interview with Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal reported that its Google traffic plunged 44 percent after leaving the “First Click Free” program.

First Click Free allows visitors from Google to access articles that are normally behind paywalls for free, when they click to them from Google’s search results. Many publishers participate in the program because they find the traffic and related ad-revenue offsets potential lost subscription revenue.

[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]

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Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan is a journalist and analyst who has covered the digital and search marketing space since 1996. He is a cofounder of and advisor to Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. conference series. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog (and he keeps his disclosures page there). He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.