How to allow googlebot past paywall

[MirandaP]

Does anyone know of any ways or ideas to allow Google/Bing etc. to index your content, but have it behind a paywall for users?

[Copstead]

Not possible.  Google's not going to index something that is not accessible to everyone.

[Mark_Ginsberg]

Google has a program called first click free - basically, you need to allow google bot, along with users, to view the first full article they land on. So if you have multiple page articles, you need to give them access to the entire article. After that though, the rest of the content can be behind a paywall.

You can read more about it here - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=74536

And here are the technical guidelines for implementation - http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40543

Hope this helps,

Mark

[MirandaP]

Thanks Mark,

I have been researching this idea from Google, but it is only for Google News and not Google Web Search.

Also, users would be able to jump the paywall by returning to Google News to search fro more links through to the site.