Google First Click Free

  • Building a subscription site for a client.

    They want “Google First Click Free” implemented.

    It seems that can be implemented via apache Referer checks or via php $_SERVER[‘HTTP_REFERER’].

    I’d think that a php method would be necessary to integrate with subscription access checks.

    Haven’t decided on a membership plugin yet, but considering s2member or Wish List Member.

    So I’m wondering if anyone has tried either and has any recommendations as to:

    • which method to use
    • which membership plugin is most amenable
    • any gotchas to be aware of

    thanks.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • Hi,

    I’m trying to find out about how to implement First Click Free too (to no avail so far), but hopefully this might help you shanebp.

    I run a membership that uses wp eMember (where it is a simple option to check a box and FCF is implemented – and it works really well too!), but I am looking to move to MemberMouse as this seems much more suitable for what I want.

    However, Member Mouse don’t have a FCF option built in, and were actually unclear what FCF actually was when I asked about it, suggesting a couple of solutions that were wide of the mark (the second of which would, from what I understand about FCF, fall foul of Google’s guidelines because you need to reveal the full content that matches what Google has crawled, not just a teaser with the rest hidden).

    On reading around further, it seems that FCF is not really that widely known about apart from some of the big news sites (even Murdoch reportedly got involved to make Google allow more than the first page to be served free) and I suppose if it was more widely known about there would be a plugin already!. In addition, there don’t seem to be any definitive guidelines for making FCF work in WordPress, which is a shame as it seems such a great idea to me.

    FWIW, I also read that MemberWing do seem to have FCF as an option out of the box, but Digital Access Pass don’t, claiming that they have only had a handful of requests for it in the last five years. Given that statistic, maybe that’s why so many people claim membership sites don’t work, ‘cos they are missing what seems to be fantastic SEO opportunity from Google.

    Anyway, hope that at least helps, but if there is anyone who can reliably provide a ‘how to’ for FCF (Google themselves seem to indicate it’s pretty simple, but I’m not a coder), then it would be much appreciated.

    Thanks

    Thread Starter shanebp

    (@shanebp)

    I rec’d a email about a reply this topic.

    I’m not sure why their reply doesn’t show up in this thread.
    The reply was helpful.
    But I’ve inadvertently deleted the email.

    Can you re-post your reply?

    thanks.

    Thread Starter shanebp

    (@shanebp)

    I see it now, weird.
    Thanks for the info, Martin.

    I want to implement first click free as well on wordpress. can’t seem to find the answer.

    What if I first publish my content for free so Google will index it and then a week or a month later put it behind a member only protected wall? would that work? would Google penalize for that or just reindex based on the 80 words excerpt instead.

    thanks

    Lei

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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