Updated
Updated · Search Engine Journal · Aug 20
Google Rolls Out 3 Personalization Features as Preferred Sources Top 600,000
Updated
Updated · Search Engine Journal · Aug 20

Google Rolls Out 3 Personalization Features as Preferred Sources Top 600,000

3 articles · Updated · Search Engine Journal · Aug 20

Summary

  • Google on Thursday expanded personalization across Search, Discover and Google News, led by a new embeddable Preferred Sources button that lets users add a publisher without leaving the publisher’s page.
  • More than 600,000 unique sources have now been selected through Preferred Sources, up from more than 345,000 in May; Google says chosen sites are more likely to appear in Top Stories and can carry a “preferred” badge in AI results.
  • In the coming days, Google app users will be able to use natural-language requests from a Discover card’s menu to ask for more or less of certain topics or links, with the feed remembering those preferences.
  • Google News on Android also now lets users customize daily audio briefings by topic, with each briefing citing the source outlet and linking to the full article.
  • The changes extend Google’s push to give users more control while offering publishers a way to recover visibility and traffic as AI-driven search products reshape referrals.

Insights

Why is Google making publishers beg for preferred status while still hiding the crucial AI click data they desperately need?
Could this new loyalty-based ecosystem secretly be a death sentence for independent journalism trying to survive in an AI-dominated search world?