Rupert Murdoch made an interesting statement in a Sky News interview today, when asked about news content available through search engines such as Google, Murdoch says he would consider blocking Google from indexing News Corp.’s news websites such as the Wall Street Journal. Of course it would naturally follow that I would immediately chart the amount of traffic that Google drives to Murdoch’s flagship news site.

Here’s the same chart from Google News to WSJ.com

In fact, on a weekly basis Google and Google news are the top traffic providers for WSJ.com account for over 25% of WSJ.com’s traffic. Even more telling. According to Experian Hitwise data, over 44% of WSJ.com visitors coming from Google are “new” users who haven’t visited the domain in the last 30 days.

While Mr. Murdoch makes some strong points in his Sky News interview regarding the plight of the news industry and the perils of making all content free, as clickstream data demonstrates – blocking Google could isolate the Journal from potential new online subscribers.
Thanks to Cheyne Winterton for the data hat-tip.