Guide
Google Preferred Sources: the new AI visibility signal
Google Preferred Sources lets a signed-in reader mark your site as one they want to see more of. Once they do, your content shows up more often in Top Stories, AI Overviews, and AI Mode - with a "preferred" badge. You add a button to your site, readers click it, and you gain a durable, reader-driven AI visibility signal Google now weighs.
On 20 August 2026, Google rolled out an embeddable "Preferred Sources" button for publishers. It landed quietly, but it is one of the more meaningful AI visibility levers Google has shipped, because it is one of the few you can influence directly rather than hope for.
What Preferred Sources actually does
When a signed-in Google user selects your site as a preferred source, Google is more likely to surface your content for that user across:
- Top Stories - your articles appear more often, tagged with a "preferred" badge.
- AI Overviews - your content can be highlighted with the preferred badge in the AI answer.
- AI Mode - same preferential treatment inside Google's conversational search.
Google's own data says a user is roughly twice as likely to click a source once they have marked it preferred, and readers have already made hundreds of thousands of these selections. Crucially, it feeds the AI surfaces - so this is not just a news-traffic play, it is an AI visibility play.
Why this matters for AI visibility
Most AI visibility work is indirect: you improve signals and hope the models cite you. Preferred Sources is different - it is an explicit, reader-driven vote that Google acts on. If your audience marks you preferred, you are structurally more likely to appear in the exact AI surfaces where being cited increasingly decides who gets found. It compounds: every reader who opts in widens your footprint in their AI results.
It also rewards genuine audience trust rather than technical tricks - which is the direction AI search keeps moving. You cannot fake it; you have to be a source people actually want more of.
How to add the Preferred Sources button
First, check you are eligible: enter your domain in Google's source preferences tool. Only domain and subdomain level sites qualify (not subdirectories), and you need to appear in the tool for readers to select you. If you show up, you are good to go.
The button (two lines)
Add this script to your <head> to load Google's library:
<script async src="https://news.google.com/swg/js/v1/publisher.js"></script>
Then drop this where you want the button to appear:
<div google-add-preferred-source-btn></div>
You can set data-theme="dark" or override the language with data-lang. That is the whole install.
No-JavaScript version (for email and social)
If your CMS cannot run the script - or you want to promote it in a newsletter, X post, or LinkedIn update - use the deeplink and swap in your own domain:
<a href="https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=yourdomain.com"> Add us as a Preferred Source </a>
The part most people will skip (do not)
The button does nothing on its own. Its entire value is clicks, and only signed-in Google users can opt in. So promote it: add a short "make us a preferred source" call to action at the end of your best articles, in your email footer, and in your social posts. A button nobody sees is a button nobody clicks.
Practise what you preach
We added the Preferred Sources button across GetVisus the day we wrote this - because a tool that measures AI visibility should use every legitimate AI visibility signal available. If you find our guides useful, you can make us a preferred source below, and it will help this content reach more people who need it.
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