Google Lets Publishers Add a 'Favourite Source' Button to Fight AI Search Traffic Losses
A new embeddable button lets readers tell Google which news sites they trust, nudging the algorithm to show those sites more often in Search, Discover, and Google News.
Key points
- Google launched an embeddable "Preferred Sources" button on Thursday, letting any publisher place it on their own website so readers can mark it as a favourite in one tap.
- People who mark a site as preferred are twice as likely to click through to it, according to Google's own earlier studies.
- As of May 2025, readers had already selected more than 345,000 unique preferred sources through Google's existing source-preferences tools.
- Google will also let users customise their Discover feed, the personalised article stream inside the Google app, using plain-English instructions typed into any three-dot menu.
- Android users will soon be able to customise their audio daily briefings inside the Google News app as well.
Google is handing publishers a small but concrete weapon in their fight against falling traffic. The new "Preferred Sources" button, announced Thursday, is a piece of embeddable code that any news site or blog can drop onto its pages. A reader clicks it once, and Google notes that site as a trusted favourite, then surfaces its stories more often across Google Search, Discover, and Google News.
Why does this matter to ordinary readers?
If you have a go-to news site you actually trust, this gives you a direct way to tell Google's algorithm to prioritise it. Without something like this, Google's AI-powered search features, including AI Overviews (the automatically generated summary boxes that now appear at the top of many search results) and AI Mode (a conversational search experience), tend to synthesise answers from multiple sources rather than sending traffic to any single site.
The knock-on effect for publishers has been brutal. Fewer clicks mean less ad revenue, which means less money for journalism. First reported by TechCrunch AI, today's move is Google's attempt to at least partly repair that relationship.
The company says people who see a preferred-source result are twice as likely to click through to it. That is a meaningful number for any site whose business depends on page views.
How do you actually use it?
You have two routes. If a publisher has added the new button, just click it while you are on their site and you are done. Alternatively, visit Google's source preferences page, search for any publisher by name or web address, and add it manually.
By May 2025, more than 345,000 unique sources had already been saved this way through Google's existing tools.
What else is changing?
Alongside the button, Google announced two more personalisation features coming soon.
First, Discover feed customisation in plain English. Tap the three-dot menu next to any article in the Google app, type something like "fewer celebrity stories, more local news", and the algorithm adjusts in real time. No settings menus, no dropdown boxes.
Second, Android users will be able to shape their audio daily briefings inside the Google News app using the same kind of natural-language instructions.
None of this reverses the structural shift AI search has created for publishers. But giving readers a simple, one-tap way to back the sources they care about at least puts some human intent back into an increasingly automated system.
Common questions
Does marking a preferred source cost anything?
No. The feature is free for both readers and publishers. Publishers need to embed the button in their site code, but selecting a preferred source as a reader costs nothing and takes a single click.
Will this guarantee I always see that site's articles?
Not always. Google says preferred sources are surfaced "more often" and that click-through rates are higher, but the algorithm still weighs relevance and other signals. It is a strong nudge, not a lock.
