Flexible Sampling general guidance

In order to better understand the potential impact of sampling changes on Google users
and publishers’ subscription models, we developed a series of experiments in cooperation with
our publishing partners. From these experiments we learned that even minor changes to the
current sampling levels could degrade user experience and, as user access is restricted,
unintentionally impact article ranking in Google Search.

There are two types of sampling we advise: metering, which provides users
with a quota of articles to consume before requiring users to subscribe or log in, after
which paywalls will start appearing; and lead-in, which offers a portion of
an article’s content without it being shown in full.

We encourage publishers to experiment cautiously with different amounts of sampling.
Here is some general guidance for implementing flexible sampling.

Metering

In general, we think that monthly, rather than daily metering provides more flexibility and
a safer environment for testing. The user impact of changing from one integer value to the
next is less significant at, say, 10 monthly samples than at 3 daily samples. Monthly
metering also has the advantage of focusing paywall views on your most engaged users, who are
those most likely to subscribe, while allowing your newer and less engaged users to become
acquainted with the value of your content before experiencing a paywall. (“Paywall,” in this
context, applies equally to barriers that require either subscription or merely registration
for content access.)

How much content?

There is no single value for optimal sampling across different businesses. However,
for most daily news publishers, we expect the value to fall between 6 and 10 articles per
user per month. We think most publishers will find a number in that range that preserves a
good user experience for new potential subscribers while driving conversion opportunities
among the most engaged users.

As a starting point for your explorations, we encourage you to provide 10 articles per month
to Google search users and iterate from there. We leave the exact number to the discretion of
individual publishers, who are best positioned to understand the particular demands of their
businesses. We encourage publishers to analyze the current percentage of search users who land
on their paywalls, and select a monthly number that achieves a similar result. You can always
lower the value later, after you have some confidence that you are on a stable footing.

Lead-in

In addition to metering, some publishers show the first few sentences of an article “above
the fold” of their paywall after the meter has run out. We think this is a good practice. By
exposing the article lead, publishers can let users experience
the value of the content and so provide more value to the user than a page with completely
blocked content. Lead-in also generates user curiosity about how article continues, which
may assist in conversion.

Making Changes

Publishers will want to experiment with different sampling values to determine their
effect on referral traffic and conversion.

Bear in mind that our user studies have shown that when users who have experienced only a
small amount of content are required to subscribe, their interest in the product diminishes
greatly. Our analysis shows that general user satisfaction starts to degrade significantly
when paywalls are shown more than 10% of the time (which generally means that about 3% of
the audience has been exposed to the paywall). We recommend caution in approaching that limit,
because you may start to alienate users who have not yet become convinced of the value of your
content.

Publishers with more advanced technical resources may want to focus their efforts more
narrowly on those specific users in the engaged segment. By identifying users who
consistently use up the monthly allotment, publishers could then target them by reducing the
sample allowance for that audience specifically, and, by allowing more liberal
consumption for other users, reduce the risk that overall user behavior and satisfaction is
degraded.

How to indicate paywalled content

Enclose paywalled content with structured data in order to help Google
differentiate paywalled content from the practice of cloaking,
where the content served to Googlebot is different from the content served to users.
If you don’t want the content to be accessible to the browser at the time of serving, choose a
paywall implementation that doesn’t supply the paywalled content to the browser.

Learn more about how to indicate paywalled
content with structured data and refer to our guidance on using JavaScript to implement paywalled content.