Google Preferred Sources is a Google Search feature that lets users choose sites they prefer, making those sites' content more likely to appear in Top Stories, with a "preferred" badge, for those users.
What it is
Preferred Sources is a personalization setting in Google Search. A reader picks the sites they want to hear from, and Google makes those sites' content more likely to show in Top Stories for that reader, marked with a "preferred" badge. For AI Mode and AI Overviews, Google's documentation says content can carry the same badge for users who selected the site.
Google announced the feature on August 12, 2025, starting in the U.S. and India. Its documentation now says Top Stories support is available in every language where Google Search operates. On August 20, 2026 Google added an embeddable "Add as a preferred source on Google" button for publishers and reported more than 600,000 unique sources selected.
How users choose sources
On a news query, a reader clicks the icon next to Top Stories, searches for a site and selects it. They can also use the source preferences tool at google.com/preferences/source directly, which is the page the publisher button and deeplink point to. Per Google, selected sources appear more often in Top Stories, or in a separate "From your sources" section, when they have published fresh, relevant content for the search. Other sites still appear, there is no cap on how many sources a user can select, and selections can be changed at any time.
How publishers add the button or link
Google documents three optional ways to ask readers to add your site. None of them is required for a site to be selectable.
- Standard JavaScript button (recommended): load https://news.google.com/swg/js/v1/publisher.js, preferably in the head, and place the marker element where the button should render. The optional data-theme attribute accepts light (default) or dark, and data-lang overrides the language, which otherwise follows the reader's browser.
- Advanced JavaScript: initialize the library and bind your own interface to addPreferredSource(), using either the ES module build or the IIFE build.
- Deeplink: link to https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=example.com, replacing the value with your domain. It works as a text link or an image, and in newsletters and social posts where scripts cannot run.
<script async src="https://news.google.com/swg/js/v1/publisher.js"></script>
<div google-add-preferred-source-btn data-theme="light"></div>
<!-- No JavaScript: plain deeplink -->
<a href="https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=example.com">
Add us as a preferred source on Google
</a>Google publishes ready-made button assets in 16 languages. Publishers may also design their own.
SEO impact
Preferred Sources is a user-level preference, not a site-wide ranking signal you can earn by markup. Google says only that selected sites are more likely to appear in Top Stories for the users who chose them, and the feature applies to queries that trigger Top Stories. Google does not describe any wider effect on rankings, and a selection does not replace the need for fresh, relevant content on the query.
The practical value is audience-level: a reader who selects your site is more likely to see your new stories in Top Stories, which matters most for news and recurring-coverage publishers. Treat the button as a loyalty prompt, similar to a newsletter sign-up, and place it where engaged readers are, such as the end of an article.
Eligibility
- Only domain-level and subdomain-level sites can appear in the source preferences tool. example.com and news.example.com qualify; example.com/blog does not.
- To check whether your site is selectable, search for it in the source preferences tool.
- For the badge in AI Mode and AI Overviews, Google states that the site must be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console.
- Using the button, script or deeplink is not required to appear as a preferred source.
Common mistakes
- Putting a section of a site (a subdirectory) in the q parameter and expecting it to be selectable.
- Loading the script only on some templates, so the button is missing on article pages where readers are most engaged.
- Blocking news.google.com in a Content Security Policy and never noticing that the button does not render. Check the page in a browser after deploying.
- Selling the feature internally as a ranking boost. It only affects what users who opted in see.
After rollout, a crawl with custom extraction can confirm that the script tag or the deeplink is present on every article template.