Rupert Murdoch completely misses the entire point of the internet — pulling site from search indexes

Getting your content onto the internet is quite the challenge in todays online world. For one, there is millions of websites all vying for your attention, each with their helping of information waiting to be devoured by your hungry eyes and minds. With so many sites to weed through, search engines are easily one of, if not the most important tool for crawling through the internet. So why would you want to purposely block yourself from being found? Perhaps that’s a good question for Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. His intentions of ridding his services of being searchable via search engines (Google in particular) as well as general distaste for anything free has pretty much earned him the image of someone stuck in the past, unable to adapt, and ultimately a failure in the digital realm of the world. Accusations of such aren’t exactly child’s play as the world is moving digital. Knowing how to manipulate this new world for your benefit is the difference between being a giant and out of business.

In the case of Mr. Murdoch, he sadly shows us that time and time again he has no clue how to use or market himself or his businesses on the internet. His latest comments and thoughts in a recent interview with Sky News Australia (video inside) clearly show he is taking his services and content in the wrong direction…

The scariest news however is that he states once paywalls have been set up for all News Corp content, Murdoch will seek to have all of it’s content pulled from Google’s search indexes. He goes on to rationalize his stance saying that the digital world has created “unloyal readers” and that search engines are the prime supporter of this behavior. Um, earth to Rupert, the internet is a completely different landscape than the traditional print world you’ve excelled in thus far. It will never be susceptible to the same business models as old print media and will never work with old rigid models retrofitted. The way news is increasingly being consumed today is via bulk. Readers want to have as many articles as they want in front of them and selecting a few to read. This quest for “loyal readers” won’t come by locking them on the outside. It will instead send them to other media outlets who will gladly offer up the very same content for a lesser price. The sooner he and his posse realize this the better.

If you want people to actively read your content and become engaged, forcing them to pay up before they ever get a preview (and no, a stupid, small little “preview paragraph” doesn’t count) isn’t likely going to sit well with the emerging generation. What happens when all of those readers pass and the newer, more technologically competent generation don’t even give your site a second look because they can’t even find it or articles when searching? Creating new readers requires content to be openly available for all to see, not locked behind some paywall. Other media outlets and start ups will surpass News Corp in time as they continue to lock themselves down tighter and tighter, pushing away any new readers even remotely interested in their content. Even though it’s been said countless times already, it must be reiterated — If you have to protect your business model by extreme amounts of restrictions, paywalls, and rules, you do not have a business model to begin with. Not exactly the way to run a technologically sound and proficient company now is it?

Alley Insider

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