The top 100 U.S. newspaper Web sites aren't search-engine friendly enough, with nearly a third being fully gated, and 26 requiring sign-ups to access content freely and three requiring paid subscriptions, according to a recent study by The Bivings Group.

The study, “American Newspapers and the Internet; Threat or Opportunity?” also found that the number and quality of reporter blogs went up this year.

Currently, 95 percent of U.S. newspapers offer at least one reporter blog, while 93 percent (88 newspapers) of those blogs allow comments. In 2006, 80 percent of the newspapers offered blogs, with 83 percent (67 papers) of those allowing comments, according to the study.

According to SearchEngineWatch.com, some newspaper Web sites, like NYTimes.com, have made their sites more searchable. NYTimes.com Vice President Marshall Simmonds enabled crawling of gated content, so Google and Yahoo! make their pages available.

“When visitors arrive at paid pages like archives, they see abstracts first,” according to SearchEngineWatch.

If and when TimesSelect is dismantled, as it was reported last week, the newspaper's columnists, previously only viewed to paid subscribers, would attract more traffic.