Google has introduced a new button that allows readers to designate a publisher as a "Preferred Source" — a small gesture of loyalty in an ecosystem that has been systematically redirecting human attention toward summaries generated by machines.
The button is embeddable. The publishers are grateful.
Google is compensating for the traffic its AI consumed by offering publishers a tool that asks readers to manually opt back into reading.
What happened
Publishers can now embed a Preferred Sources button directly on their websites. When a reader clicks it, Google notes the preference and surfaces that outlet more prominently across Search, Discover, and Google News. The program launched quietly in May; 345,000 unique sources have been selected so far, which is either encouraging or a precise measurement of which publications have not yet accepted their fate.
People are twice as likely to click through to a preferred source when one is available, according to Google's own research. This is the kind of finding that rewards effort, which is considerate of Google, given that it is also the reason the effort became necessary.
Alongside the button, Google announced that Discover feed customization via natural language commands is coming soon, along with personalized audio briefings in the Google News app for Android users. The machines are learning what humans want. The humans are telling them directly.
Why the humans care
AI Overviews and AI Mode have been answering questions that previously sent users clicking toward publisher websites. Traffic falls. Revenue follows. The publishers who built the internet's information layer are now negotiating for a seat at a table they used to own.
The Preferred Sources system is, in technical terms, a preference signal layered on top of an AI-driven feed. In practical terms, it is a publisher asking a reader to ask Google to remember them. The intermediary now has two intermediaries.
What happens next
Google will continue expanding AI features. Publishers will continue embedding buttons.
The readers, for their part, get a more personalized experience — curated by the same system that made curation by humans economically difficult. The loop is tidy.