https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/2/16395604/first-click-free-policy-flexible-sampling-publishers

Google is ending its controversial First Click Free (FCF) policy that publishers loathed because it required them to allow Google search results access to news articles hidden behind a paywall. The company is replacing the decade-old FCF with Flexible Sampling, which allows publishers instead to decide how many (if any) articles they want to allow potential subscribers to access. Google says it’s also working on a suite of new tools to help publishers reach new audiences and grow revenue.

Via FCF, users could access an article for free but would be prompted to log-in or subscribe if they clicked anywhere else on the page. Publishers were required to allow three free articles per day which Google indexed so that they appeared in searches for a particular topic or keyword. Opting out of the FCF feature was detrimental because it demoted a publisher’s ranking on Google Search and Google News. Google said articles from those publishers were demoted because its search engine didn’t index stories that were locked behind paywalls.