Remember when Rupert Murdoch caused a stir by saying that he was going to start blocking news search services like Google News from carrying his sites’ stories? Well, it looks like he’s started.
News aggregator NewsNow is claiming that Murdoch’s UK-based Times Online website has started blocking it from indexing stories.
The block has been put in place via TimesOnline’s Robots.txt file, a simple change for any website owner to make. NewsNow’s Struan Bartlett said “It is lamentable that (Murdoch’s company) News International has chosen to request we stop linking to their content and providing in-bound traffic and potential subscribers to the Times Online and right now it looks as though NewsNow has been singled out”.
It’s understandable that NewsNow would feel aggrieved by the situation – their site is essentially a list of links to news stories. It more resembles a link sharing service like Reddit than the almost magazine-like Google News.
NewsNow is a minnow in the news search business compared to Google News and it could very well be that Murdoch is ‘testing the water’ by blocking one of his many news sources from being accessed by one small aggregation service.
Murdoch has said previously that he would put paywalls up around much of his online news content, accusing aggregators like Google News of “stealing” the hard work of his journalists. How successful his plans will be remains to be seen, but if his plans are running to course the first of his UK news properties should be behind a paywall within months.
UPDATE:
Indeed, checking the contents of www.timesonline.co.uk/robots.txt reveals the following code.
#Agent Specific Disallowed Sections User-agent: NewsNow Disallow: /
We’ll be keeping an eye on that file to see if it grows over time…
Since when do you have to start paying for news? I don’t read his newspapers or tune into any of his media. His news is not relevant. If I need relevancy, I go to CNN. I want unbiased news and this is the best of them so far.
Mary, but what if CNN started to charge? They could if they wanted…
BBC News works well in that case, and there’s no way they’re going to start charging. I reckon Murdoch’s news outlets will become irrelevant if he keeps this up.
They’ve got no archive and no open directory project (DMOZ) robots tags, too.
Awesome! This is going to be so fun to watch!
*I’m a little to excited about this whole Murdoch threat coming to fruition, methinks*
Good catch, Martin! ~ Donna
I believe most web content is not worth paying for. This includes especially generic news reporting like Times Online provides. Will see what happens…
Who cares! Let him wallow and drown in his own antiquated business model. Maybe then we will be shut of him.
As soon as they block google indexing them, bye-bye probably 90% of their traffic, 90% of any ad revenue – either they’ll realise their place in the new scheme of things then or drift into ever more irrelevancy and probably collapse soon after.
I wouldn’t put it past Google to ensure even a search for “times online” to start finding other news services above theirs just to put the nails in the coffin too.
Yeah, so just ignore the contents of the robots.txt file… Screw Rupert and his half baked ideas…
How Rupert got to where he is today is a mystery to me. Doesn’t seem to have a grasp on the future.
Is newsnow.co.uk really a minnow?? Check out traffic comparison between them, Techcrunch and The Next Web..
http://bit.ly/9002S7
It dosnt matter if Murdoch starts to charge, just use BBC CBC ABC-Australia.
“…The block has been put in place via TimesOnline’s Robots.txt file, a simple change for any website owner to make. …”
Couldn’t it be easy for Newsnow to simply update the name of their Bot [script], thus negating TimesOnline’s block?
Using robots.txt to block their Bot seems a innefective solution, even in the median; by far, their [TimesOnline’s] method should be to utilise blocking at the server level, using .htaccess and IP blocking of the Bot/Scrape-Script.
Oh well…
You are missing the point: If newsnow takes the same approach as google, and they probably do from the statements in the article, they aren’t interested in finding a loophole for the robots.txt, but are instead willing to let murdoch pull himself off their site and go hang if he wants too. So long as people are willing to play by the rules no fancy technical solutions are necessary
The Murdoch media empire is nothing but opinionated garbage with a conservative and corporate slant. The empire is crumbling around him though… slander rag contractions continue globally eating away at hi profits. He is forced to consolidate sources but in return those once loyal reporters are moving on to other outlets who value reality and the actual reporting of news rather than slanted bias which is current of the Murdoch press core.
You can always read ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) freely, and according to Mark Scott, The Managing Director, That’s how it’s going to stay. http://abc.net.au
Wolfie!
Someone will come along and offer equal content for free. Screw Murdoch.
Murdock is obviously WAY TOO OLD to still be managing fox news
There is NO WAY that this will be profitable
All journalists do is take info from other sources and re-write it
So why would anyone pay for news when there’s a million free outlets?
So who needs Faux News anyway?
Well it takes some courage to say they don’t want to have their site indexed! Guess they want someone else to become more popular, but it realy is bold, because media reporting is a dying business. If you can’t offer news for free, then pull over so someone else can lead, so i guess thats what they’re doing!
“As soon as they block google indexing them, bye-bye probably 90% of their traffic, 90% of any ad revenue”
Why do you assume those two numbers will be equivalent?
Traffic from Google != Visits that you can sell to an advertiser.
Any move to restrict people finding his online papers, is plain daft.
Rupert Murdoch Media Empire should be investigated for posting lies against Infowar.com. How is it that Rupert Murdoch is allowed to have so much power? Remember the series of V done in the 80`s? That is the way we are heading. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdcwWF7r8T4&feat…