Google Tackles AI Search with Preferred Sources Feature

Google has introduced a new feature called 'Preferred Sources' that allows publishers to encourage readers to prioritize their content in search results. This comes as media companies struggle with changes in referral traffic caused by AI-powered search products.

Publishers can now place the Google Preferred Sources button directly on their websites, allowing readers to designate them as a source they want to see more frequently. Once selected, a preferred publisher is more likely to appear prominently in Google's Top Stories feature and receive a preferred-source label in AI Mode and AI Overviews.

According to Google, readers are twice as likely to click through to a website after marking it as a preferred source. The company has already seen hundreds of thousands of individual sources selected through the programme.