Subscription and paywalled content

This page describes how to use schema.org JSON-LD to indicate paywalled content on your site with CreativeWork properties. This structured data helps Google differentiate paywalled content from the practice of cloaking, which violates our guidelines. Learn more about subscription and paywalled content.

Example

Here's an example of NewsArticle structured data with paywalled content. 

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Article headline</title>
    <script type="application/ld+json">
    {
      "@context": "https://schema.org",
      "@type": "NewsArticle",
      "mainEntityOfPage": {
        "@type": "WebPage",
        "@id": "https://example.org/article"
      },
      "headline": "Article headline",
      "image": "https://example.org/thumbnail1.jpg",
      "datePublished": "2025-02-05T08:00:00+08:00",
      "dateModified": "2025-02-05T09:20:00+08:00",
      "author": {
        "@type": "Person",
        "name": "John Doe"
      },
      "publisher": {
         "name": "The Exemplary Times",
         "@type": "Organization",
         "logo": {
            "@type": "ImageObject",
            "url": "https://example.org/logo.jpg"
         }
      },
      "description": "A most wonderful article",
      "isAccessibleForFree": "False",
      "hasPart":
        {
        "@type": "WebPageElement",
        "isAccessibleForFree": "False",
        "cssSelector" : ".paywall"
        }
    }
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div class="non-paywall">
      Non-Paywalled Content
    </div>
    <div class="paywall">
      Paywalled Content
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

Guidelines

You must follow the general structured data guidelines and technical guidelines for your page to be eligible to appear in search results. In addition, the following guidelines apply to paywalled content:

  • JSON-LD and microdata formats are accepted methods for specifying structured data for paywalled content.
  • Don't nest content sections.
  • Only use .class selectors for the cssSelector property.

Add markup to paywalled content

If you offer any subscription-based access to your website content, or if users must register for access to any content you want to be indexed, follow the steps below. The following example applies to NewsArticle structured data. Make sure to follow these steps for all versions of your page (including AMP and non-AMP).

  1. Add a class name around each paywalled section of your page. For example: 
    <body>
<p>This content is outside a paywall and is visible to all.</p>
<div class="paywall">This content is inside a paywall, and requires a subscription or registration.</div>
</body>
  2. Add NewsArticle structured data.
  3. Add the highlighted JSON-LD structured data to your NewsArticle structured data. 
    {
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "NewsArticle",
  "mainEntityOfPage": {
    "@type": "WebPage",
    "@id": "https://example.org/article"
  },
  (...)
  "isAccessibleForFree": "False",
  "hasPart": {
    "@type": "WebPageElement",
    "isAccessibleForFree": "False",
    "cssSelector": ".paywall"
  }
}

Multiple paywalled sections

If you have multiple paywalled sections on a page, add the class names as an array.

Here's an example of the paywalled sections on a page:

<body>
<div class="section1">This content is inside a paywall, and requires a subscription or registration.</div>
<p>This content is outside a paywall and is visible to all.</p>
<div class="section2">This is another section that's inside a paywall, and requires a subscription or registration.</div>
</body>

Here's an example of NewsArticle structured data with multiple paywalled sections. 

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "NewsArticle",
  "mainEntityOfPage": {
    "@type": "WebPage",
    "@id": "https://example.org/article"
  },
  (...)
  "isAccessibleForFree": "False",
  "hasPart": [
    {
      "@type": "WebPageElement",
      "isAccessibleForFree": "False",
      "cssSelector": ".section1"
    }, {
      "@type": "WebPageElement",
      "isAccessibleForFree": "False",
      "cssSelector": ".section2"
    }
  ]
}

Supported types

This markup is supported for the CreativeWork type or one of the following more specific types of CreativeWork:

Multiple schema.org types can be used, such as the following:

"@type": ["Article", "LearningResource"]

AMP considerations

Here's a list of considerations to keep in mind if you use AMP pages:

  • If you have an AMP page with paywalled content, use amp-subscriptions where appropriate.
  • Make sure that your authorization endpoint grants access to content to the appropriate bots from Google and others. This is different per publisher.
  • Ensure that your bot access policy is the same for AMP and non-AMP pages, otherwise this can result in content mismatch errors that appear in Search Console.

Make sure Google can crawl and index your pages

If you want Google to crawl and index your content, including the paywalled sections, make sure Googlebot, and Googlebot-News if applicable, can access your page.

Use the URL Inspection tool to test how Google crawls and renders a URL on your site.

Control what information is shown in search results

To prevent Google from showing a cached link for your page, use the noarchive robots meta tag.

To exclude certain sections of your content from appearing in search result snippets, use the data-nosnippet HTML attribute. You can also limit how many characters a search result snippet may have by using the max-snippet robots meta tag.

Troubleshooting

If you're having trouble implementing or debugging structured data, here are some resources that may help you.