Yahoo! to offer subscription site searches

Finding content behind closed doors

[cellularnews]

It's a Beta launch - but enables you to find content on sites that are only available to subscribers.

Will be interesting to see if they wrap this into their existing search results - as it could have a significant impact on driving traffic to "pay only" services.

[search.yahoo.com...]

[christopher w]

Yeah - I just was reading about this.

Here is an article about on BusinessWeek.com [businessweek.com]

[Namaste]

here's another angle on it:
[fool.com...]

Slick marketing aside, "deep Web" is a not-so-deep idea. Though the search can target seven different publications, you can't access any results unless you subscribe to the site or service in question. Yahoo! believes that Search Subscriptions offers some convenience, eliminating the need to find information on individual sites. However, since many users probably have access to only a few of the restricted-content sites anyway, the time saved seems pretty minimal.

[cellularnews]

I would guess though that the long term goal of all parties involved is for:

The content providers to offer one-off cheap purchases of that single news article.

Yahoo to offer agregated subscriptions to multiple news services when accessed via Yahoo.

[Bentler]

Depending on how subscription search is designed, it could help the viability of newspapers and magazines as it improves the quality and uniqueness of reporting and writing. Hopefully it builds upon a micropayments model and offers an alternative to advertising revenue, and if they build visitor ratings into their serps, it could help readers choose the highest quality content. Search for subscription sites is a great step in the evolution of the Web. Here's why:

Per Joseph Pulitzer:

Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.

Wired: News Papers Should Really Worry [webmasterworld.com]

Why Is the Pulitzer Club Getting So Exclusive? [archives.cjr.org]