Google launches embeddable button letting readers highlight favorite news sources
Google is giving publishers a new tool — an embeddable "Preferred Sources" button that lets readers flag a site to appear more often in Search, Discover and AI features. The move comes as AI-driven search continues to erode traffic to news websites.
Google on Thursday introduced a new tool meant to help publishers whose traffic has suffered amid the rise of AI-powered search. The company is now letting online publishers embed an interactive "Preferred Sources" button directly on their own websites, allowing readers to mark that site as one they want to see highlighted more often across Google Search, Discover, and Google News.
The feature builds on Preferred Sources, which Google rolled out in May for its AI experiences, including AI Mode and AI Overviews. The option had already existed within Top Stories before that.
The goal is to make it easier for people to surface content from sites they already know and trust, whether they're searching normally or interacting with Google's AI tools to catch up on a topic. At the time of the May launch, Google said users across the web had already selected more than 345,000 unique sources this way.
To mark a site as a favorite, readers can visit Google's source preferences page and search for a publisher by name or URL. Google said becoming a preferred source can meaningfully boost traffic — earlier internal studies found users are twice as likely to click through to a source when it's marked as preferred.
The new button is part of a broader effort by Google to soften the blow that AI search features have dealt to traffic-dependent publishers.
More personalization tools coming
Google also announced that readers will soon be able to customize their Discover feed within the Google app using natural language. By tapping a three-dot menu next to a story, users will be able to tell Google what topics they want to see more or less of, letting the company refine the feed in real time. Several major social media platforms have rolled out similar AI-powered feed-tuning controls in recent months. Google added that Android users will also gain the ability to customize their audio news briefings within the Google News app.
