14 DAY TRIAL // Google News is one of the largest news services on the web, receiving articles from approximately 4.500 sources from all around the world. Obviously, because Google News is accessible for free, you would expect to see only free material available at one-click distance. But in case you didn't know, Google News also indexes subscription-based articles which require you to register for an account on the author's page before reading the material. Talking from the reader's point of view, this doesn't have a powerful impact over the reading experience. But from the publisher's perspective this is quite an important function because you have to configure your subscription-based content in order to be indexed by Google News.
Well, this can be easily done using the 'First click free' function, which was especially designed for this reason. Basically, this allows you to get your article summaries indexed by Google News, the service redirecting the interested users to them. Then, in order to read the rest of the article, the visitors are required to register for an account on the official website of the author.
"In practice, this means that when you click on a link from Google News, you'll be able to see the article without receiving a prompt to login. If you would like to read more from the same source and choose to click on another story, you'll be taken to a registration prompt. We like to think of First click free as a simple system that allows you to test drive a news source before signing up on their site," Christina Cacioppo, News Support Team intern, wrote on the official blog of the service.
Google News has always been a criticized technology because the Internet companies sustained the service receives praises and money for the content provided by other authors. However, Google News is an important source of traffic because it can easily bring a visitor on your website as long as your articles are published on its official page.