Associated Press goes nuclear on search engines
The AP is threatening search engines with legal action for bringing an audience of millions to their doors. Too bad the venerable news organization’s war on the Internet is likely to end up much more like Chernobyl.
The AP’s latest stance is that it takes issue with anyone so much as listing the title of one of their articles with a link to it. This applies to search engines as well as news aggregators that link to their articles.
This would be like charging newsstand owners for each person that walks by within viewing distance. While the traffic walking by may catch a glimpse of some headlines, it generates sales of the paper which includes advertisements that profit the paper.
Search Results
Even more ridiculous is the fact that the AP can choose not to be included in search results. By putting a simple file on their server, any Web site can indicate to search engines not to include their content.
So why doesn’t the AP simply remove their articles from search listings? Because the major search engines and news aggregators send them millions of visitors every month.
Audience
Once visitors come to an AP article, the organization can also display advertising on the page much like a newspaper. However, unlike the days when newspapers ruled, they generally aren’t charging a subscription fee tot heir audience.
If the AP wanted to charge subscription fees for their content, the search engines will also not crawl their stories. The Wall Street Journal chose to make snippets available in order to garner a larger audience coming from the major search engines.
Now that news organizations can’t hide behind a subscription wall, they’re trying to make up revenue by suing the very people that bring them an audience. In the process, the organization is putting a major portion of its online audience at risk.
Search Engine Optimization
There’s also good reason to allow news aggregators and other sites to link to their articles. Each time someone links to an AP article, it indicates to Google that you are a credible source which boosts your search engine rankings.
This would drive the AP’s articles to the top of search engine results, boosting the audience of their articles even further. The larger the online audience, the more money they can charge their advertisers.
Whether or not the AP’s leaders understand the consequences of their actions, they may just get their wish. Then they will have to explain the visits to their articles plummeting dramatically right along with potential advertising revenue.
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July 25th, 2009
Another out of touch organization.