Is Google First Click Free coming soon?

Do you have Google First Click Free or is it coming?

You should strongly consider implementing it. That’s probably the main reason why I would NOT choose S2Member, because I would be missing out on a lot of the SEO benefits of getting my content indexed into Google yet still be inside the members area.

Here’s some links about Google First Click Free:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=74536

http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40543

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-click-free-for-web-search.html

http://www.thinksearch.co.uk/2013/01/18/googles-first-click-free-and-the-paywall-dilemma/

Big publishers such as Wall Street Journal are using First Click Free.

http://searchengineland.com/wsj-pulls-back-on-what-google-searchers-can-read-for-free-112922

Besides the SEO benefits, the other big reason to have this feature is to allow the Google Spider into the members area. If Google is blocked from access, then you can’t use features such as Google’s document viewer to embed PDF’s and other file formats into your membership site. The Google spider needs to get inside the member wall in order to show files with the viewer. Anyone who runs a membership site with a lot of embdedded documents, won’t be able to use Google viewer, they would have to find another solution. When you have Google First Click Free enabled, then you CAN use the Google viewer to show embedded pdf files inside your members only area. That’s a BIG feature!

About Google Document viewer:

https://docs.google.com/viewer

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/wmgpk9N8LrU

Implementing Google First Click Free seems to be pretty easy and straightforward and I think it would add a lot of value to your membership plugin. If you had that, then it would be a “no-brainer” with all the other great features.

Thanks for considering my ideas. Let me know if this feature is coming soon.

Regards,
Robert

• This topic was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by  Eduan. Reason: Moved to the pre-sale questions forum

Thank you for your inquiry.

We’re looking at many possibilities for the next major release of s2Member, and this is on our list. However in the mean time we don’t have any plans for adding support for this in the current release of s2Member. Sorry.

Hi Bruce,

Just a quick follow-up to my last message about Google First Click Free. One of the other unexpected benefits I discovered was that having First Click Free access also allows the Google spider in so you can now index your private content into Google Site Search (which is the custom Google search engine you can embed on your own website). Without this feature, Google can’t get inside your site to see what’s there. I was quite surprised to discover this! Very useful.

http://www.google.com/cse/all (google adsense branded version)

http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/products_gss.html (private label version)

So, again the big benefits of Google First Click Free are:

1. You get all your content indexed into Google and get a huge SEO boost which attracts more visitors, yet can still protect your content. More visitors means more will become members.

2. You can make use of the Google document viewer inside protected membership site areas. Now you can can embed PDF files, excel spreadsheets, word documents and more and let Google handle the processing of those files.

3. You can use Google Site Search on your site and index and monetize your members only content. Or use the private label version and still get your private content indexed.
I’m sure I’ll discover more benefits, but I was really surprised to learn all this. Right now I’m using another membership plugin (only because it has this feature, none of the other membership plugins do).

I wish the plugin I’m using was a bit more comprehensive like yours is. It doesn’t have a customer portal where people can update their billing information. And it doesn’t have Stripe payment processing. The payment gateways are rather limited and must be bundled with their estore product or you are forced to just use paypal or clickbank. But, I gave up on those things in favor of Google First Click Free, mainly for the SEO benefits and extra traffic I get will make up for it.

If you end-up adding Google First-Click Free, please let me know. I’d be happy to try it out for you and would probably switch over.

These 3 big benefits could add a lot of value to your plugin and make more sales and happy customers. It would certainly make your membership plugin unique in the marketplace and be a real game changer.

Keep me posted.

Warm Regards,
Rob