Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google, the company has announced. The concession follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages. Under the First Click Free programme, publishers can now prevent unrestricted access to subscription websites. Users who click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages. "Previously, each click from a user would be treated as free," Google senior business product manager Josh Cohen said in a blog post . This may still be a significant moment in the battle between old and new media 
 
 Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC technology correspondent 
 
 Did Google just blink? "Now, we've updated the programme so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing." Google users may start seeing registration pages appear when they click for a sixth time on any given day at websites of publishers using the programme, according to Mr Cohen. This will only affect websites that currently charge for content. 'Significant move' The announcement is seen as a reaction to concerns in the newspaper industry that Google is using newspaper content unfairly. Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of Newscorp, has accused firms such as Google of profiting from journalism by generating advertising revenue by linking readers to newspaper articles. Some readers have discovered they can avoid paying subscription fees to newspaper websites by calling up their pages via Google. ANALYSIS Tim Weber, business editor, BBC News website The dispute between media groups and Google reflects the general confusion over how traditional media can make money on the internet. Every newspaper owner angry about Google's linking policy can use a simple remedy: add two lines of code to a file on your servers and Google will leave you alone. Deep down, most media owners realise that the old "publish it and they will come" principle does not work in an on-demand world. If Google would not link to their websites, the very same media groups would bitterly complain about Google's refusal to generate valuable online traffic. Unless you own premium content (from the Wall Street Journal at one end to porn at the other), making money from on-demand content means first and foremost that your audiences have to be able to find you. The problem: Nobody has quite figured out a business model for a world where consumers don't want their morning or evening news, but want the Now O'clock News - the "on-demand and to my taste" news. This is because Google searches frequently link directly to newspaper articles, bypassing some sites' subscription systems. Broadcasting and media consultant Steve Hewlett said that Google's response was "a pretty significant move". "Rupert Murdoch is trying to build a consensus that paying for content online is right and that aggregators like Google that use newspaper content but don't pay for it are doing something wrong," he said. Search for revenue Newspapers are increasingly looking for new ways to make money from their online content amid a continuing decline in circulation figures and advertising revenues. Earlier this week Johnston Press, the UK's largest regional newspaper publisher, announced plans to to begin charging for access to six of its titles online. The move follows a 42% slump in advertising revenues at the group over the last two years. Earlier this year, the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) cut 1,000 jobs at its regional arm Northcliffe Media, which publishes more than 100 newspapers in England and Wales. Newscorp, which owns the Times and the Sun newspapers in the UK, has also been affected by the downturn. In June, it announced losses of $3.4bn (£2bn) for the previous 12 months, describing the year as "the most difficult in recent history". It has also revealed plans to begin charging for access to all its online content. The corporation currently charges for access to its US title the Wall Street Journal. 
 
 
 
 Bookmark with: Delicious 
 
 Digg 
 
 reddit 
 
 Facebook 
 
 StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version ||||| LONDON (Reuters) - Google is offering news publishers a way to attract paying subscribers without having to remove their content from Google News search results, after some media companies accused it of profiting from their online news. 
 
 The Web search giant said it would adapt its so-called First Click Free program to prompt online readers to register or subscribe to a news provider's site after reading five free articles from that publisher in a day. 
 
 Previously, the user's first click on any article would be free for an unlimited number of articles, provided the user did not click through any more links from any article. 
 
 Google said the update would allow publishers to focus on potential subscribers who were accessing a lot of their content on a regular basis. Google senior business product manager Josh Cohen said: "As newspapers consider charging for access to their online content, some publishers have asked: should we put up pay walls or keep our articles in Google news and Google search?" 
 
 "In fact they can do both -- the two aren't mutually exclusive," he wrote on Google News's official blog (googlenewsblog.blogspot.com). 
 
 Rupert Murdoch's News Corp had been reported to be considering removing its news from Google's web search results and to be talking to rival Microsoft search engine Bing about listing stories there instead. 
 
 News Corp already limits online access to its Wall Street Journal newspaper to paying subscribers, and plans to do the same for its Times and Sunday Times newspapers in Britain. 
 
 Many other news providers are also considering putting up paywalls around online content as a recession-led slump and structural changes in advertising mean they can no longer fund newsgathering operations from ad revenues. 
 
 Google's relationship with publishers who put news behind paywalls is complicated by the fact its web crawlers need to access the content behind the paywall to index it and make it discoverable by its search engine. 
 
 But its crawlers cannot fill in registration or subscription forms, leading to the potential for users to be shown different content from what the crawler sees, and hence encouraging users to click through to pages that are not what they expected. 
 
 First Click Free is Google's way around that problem, known as cloaking. 
 
 Google also offers free previews of articles that publishers give it -- typically a headline and the first few paragraphs of a story -- and labels them as "subscription" in Google News. 
 
 It said on its blog post the ranking of such articles would be the same whether the articles were paid for or free. 
 
 "Paid content may not do as well as free options, but that is not a decision we make based on whether or not it's free. It's simply based on the popularity of the content with users and other sites that link to it," Google said. 
 
 Google said it would keep talking to publishers to refine its methods. 
 
 (Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Dan Lalor)
– In a bid to placate struggling media companies but keep content in search results, Google has offered publishers a program that limits users to five free articles a day. A user who clicks through from Google to the same news source more than five times a day would be automatically rerouted to a subscription or registration page, Reuters reports. "As newspapers consider charging for access to their online content, some publishers have asked: Should we put up pay walls or keep our articles in Google news and Google search?" a Google rep said. "In fact they can do both." The change to Google's First Click Free program—which allows readers to circumvent pay walls by clicking through from Google—will only be offered to news sources that already charge for content, BBC reports.