Google adds guidance On JavaScript paywalls

3 MilnerRoute 2 9/2/2025, 4:11:36 PM searchenginejournal.com ↗

Comments (2)

benoau · 3d ago
> Some JavaScript paywall solutions include the full content in the server response, then use JavaScript to hide it until subscription status is confirmed. This isn’t a reliable way to limit access to the content. Make sure your paywall only provides the full content once the subscription status is confirmed.”

> Why: To help sites understand challenges with the JavaScript-based paywall design pattern, as it makes it difficult for Google to automatically determine which content is paywalled and which isn’t.”

Something smells about this...

MilnerRoute · 3d ago
My first thought was that Google wants to stop crawling paywalled content (and then later displaying it in their "AI Overviews".)

But I wonder if this penalizes paywalled content. (If it's not crawled, then isn't it also no longer indexed in search results?)