Google lets publishers embed a "Preferred Sources" button on their own sites

The interactive button, announced Thursday, extends a feature Google first rolled out in May inside its AI experiences, including AI Mode and AI Overviews, after previously offering it only in Top Stories. As of that May launch, Google said people across the web had already selected more than 345,000 unique sources this way. Publishers can now embed the button directly on their own websites rather than relying only on Google’s interfaces; readers can also add a favorite source manually by visiting Google’s source preferences page and searching for a publisher by name or website.

Google says becoming a preferred source can drive more traffic to a publisher, citing its own earlier studies finding that people are twice as likely to click through to a preferred source when one is available. The company is positioning the tool as a way to help readers keep finding sites they already know and trust as AI-generated search results and summaries reshape how people discover content — and as a way to offset some of the traffic damage publishers have attributed to those AI features.

Alongside the button, Google said readers will soon be able to customize their Discover feed in the Google app using natural language: tapping a post’s three-dot menu will let them tell Google, in their own words, which topics to see more or less of, refining the feed in real time. Google is not alone in this shift — several major social platforms have recently launched similar user-controlled recommendation tools. Google also said Android users will soon be able to customize their audio daily briefings inside the Google News app.

Why it matters

Handing publishers an embeddable loyalty button is a modest concession compared to the scale of AI-driven traffic loss many report, but it signals Google is willing to build small trust-and-attribution tools even as its own AI answers keep absorbing search clicks that once went to publisher sites.