Adding Google's Preferred Sources button to a publication

Google’s Preferred Sources button gives a regular reader a way to ask for more results from a publication. It is a small addition to a publishing site, with a few details to check before treating it as a traffic opportunity.

A preference set by the reader

Google Search has a personalisation setting. A reader can tell Google: when a story is breaking, show me these publications near the top. Those picks are that reader’s preferred sources.

The picks don’t rewrite the whole results page. They bias specific slots. According to Google’s documentation for publishers, a preferred source is more likely to surface in Top Stories (the news carousel), in AI Overviews and in AI Mode.

AI Overviews is the summarised answer Google writes at the top of the page; AI Mode is the separate chat-style tab where you hold a conversation with Search instead of scanning ten blue links. Both of them cite sources, and both are places where being one of the cited names is now partly a reader’s decision rather than purely a ranking outcome.

The August release made the preference easier to offer from the publication’s own pages.

What actually shipped

An embeddable button. You add a script tag and a div:

<script async src="https://news.google.com/swg/js/v1/publisher.js"></script>
<div google-add-preferred-source-btn></div>

The script goes in the <head>. The div goes wherever you want the button to appear. Google renders a styled, automatically localised button in the reader’s own language. You can force a language with data-lang, and switch to a dark version with data-theme="dark".

The behaviour matters more than the markup. When a reader taps it, your site is added to their preferred sources and they are returned to the article they were reading. No redirect to a Google settings screen, no lost session. Test that return journey on the actual site.

If you cannot run JavaScript at all, Google documents a plain link fallback: https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=example.com.

One eligibility limit is worth knowing before you plan anything around it. Preferred sources work at the domain and subdomain level only. A subdirectory (example.com/blog) cannot be a preferred source. If your editorial content lives in a folder under a corporate domain, the reader who presses the button subscribes to the whole domain rather than to your section.

The numbers, and what they don’t say

Google’s announcement gives two figures. More than 600,000 unique sources have been selected. And, as TechCrunch reported, Google says readers are twice as likely to click through to a preferred source when one appears.

Be careful with the second one. Readers who select a publication may already be more inclined to open its articles. The reported difference does not isolate the effect of the button or establish a likely lift for your site.

Placement and implementation checks

Consider it where readers already have a reason to follow the publication. Check the added third-party script against the site’s privacy and security requirements, or use the documented link option.

1. Put it where loyalty already exists. The end of an article, the newsletter sign-up block, the “about this publication” footer. Not a homepage hero. The reader who presses it just finished something of yours and liked it, so meet them there.
2. Check it renders. It is third-party JavaScript from news.google.com. Content Security Policy, consent settings or script blockers may prevent it loading. Preserve those protections and provide a suitable fallback. A button that isn’t there looks exactly like a button nobody pressed.
3. Set data-theme deliberately. Light is the default. On a dark-themed site the default is going to look wrong.
4. Check your domain structure first. If your content sits in a subdirectory, the button still works, but you are asking readers to prefer the parent domain. Decide whether that is what you want.
5. Keep the invitation optional. Place it alongside other ways to follow the publication rather than interrupting the article.

The same announcement also let readers tune their Discover feed in plain language, typing what they want more and less of, as Search Engine Land covered. For publications receiving Discover traffic, reader preferences are another reason not to attribute every change to the site’s own edits.