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The AP Crackdown
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While I am not really much of a fan of the AP, I cannot say I blame them for being cheesed off when people stoop to stealing their content. I have gone through this enough myself, so I can understand their perspective there.
But to say you want to prevent the “headlines” from appearing in search engines borders on the insane. Clearly, the AP is living in a bizzaro universe as I don’t believe the Web works that way.
See, when I publish something such as this post, I realize that someone might very well link to the headline or Google will index this piece. It’s not a big deal. Wonder why the AP is making it into one?
3 Comments
Naomi Most
July 29th, 2009
at 1:46am
Because, to speak quite literally, people really do only read the headlines.
AP knows this: the value of their content is the headlines themselves.
One wonders how AP wishes the web would work, and how they’d attract any viewers without allowing their content on search engines.
Talk about a no-win situation for AP….
Joe Kennedy
July 29th, 2009
at 1:51am
The AP knows their days are numbered and they are grasping at straws. They are doing very little to change with the world and will be gone soon.
Brian
July 29th, 2009
at 9:49am
This seems very counter-productive. Wouldn’t having your headline and lead paragraph in the search engines help you (and your clients) validate authorship? If they don’t want RSS engines and ‘content thieves’ using their content the answer is to have the articles behind a secure site and accessible by A(wt)P clients. When the story has run, move it to a public site.