CMP Blocks Google News Because Their Lawyers Want Fewer Visitors
from the how-stupid-can-you-be dept
Sometimes it's worth repeating the mantra that lawyers understand the law, and not business. Just because a lawyer tells your business it can do something, it doesn't necessarily make sense to actually do it. It makes absolutely no sense, for instance, that CMP has apparently decided to ban all incoming links from Google News, just because they excerpt a couple sentences (and maybe an image). They are actively turning away traffic, and this is a business that is based on advertising. Perhaps this is just a mistake, but if it's not, it's a stupid policy that is going to cost CMP plenty of visitors (read: ad revenue) because some lawyers made a bad decision. Do they really think this will somehow bring them more visitors who will go to their front page instead? It won't. It will bring them many fewer visitors, because they've just cut off their most directed channel of traffic. Important Update: As noted in the comments by someone from CMP, this was an accident. They believe a script went wrong, and they do not intend to block such links.
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Short lived decision
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cmp blocking google, not so
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