Google is to allow publishers to limit free access to content found via Google News, it announced in a blog post yesterday.

Publishers using restricted access systems will be able to prevent Google News users looking at more than five pages of content a day without registration or subscription.

In the post, Google said:

“We’re happy to see that a number of publishers are already using First Click Free [a system allowing very first article view by a Google News user] we’ve found that some who might try it are worried about people abusing the spirit of First Click Free to access almost all of their content.

“As most users are generally happy to be able to access just a few pages from these premium content providers, we’ve decided to allow publishers to limit the number of accesses under the First Click Free policy to five free accesses per user each day.

“This change applies to both Google News publishers as well as websites indexed in Google’s Web Search. We hope that this encourages even more publishers to open up more content to users around the world!”