Google is offering a new Preferred Source button for publishers that makes the subscription process smoother while keeping readers on your site.
Now when a user clicks on the Preferred Source button, it adds the site as a Preferred Source on Google and immediately directs them back to where they left off on the publisher’s page.
What it looks like. Here is the user flow, showing on the left the “Add to Preferred Sources” Google button on the web page, then it opens up a page that lets you click “Add” to add that site as a Preferred Source on Google. After you click the “Add” button, you are taken right back to the page you were reading, on that publishers site.
The code. You can grab the new embed code on the Google help documentation.
Preferred Sources. Preferred Sources let searchers star publications in the Top Stories section of Google Search, and Google uses that signal to show more stories from those starred outlets. The feature entered beta in June of 2025, rolled out in the U.S. and India in August, and is now expanding globally. Google rolled out preferred sources globally in December 2025 and then in May, Google enabled it for all languages.
Growing feature. Google also said that so far “people have already selected more than 600,000 unique sources.” So it seems like users are using this feature. In May 2026, Google said that number was 200,000, that is a 200% increase.
Why we care. Traffic from Google Search is hard and if you can get your readers, loyal readers, to make your site a preferred source, that can help. Google said those users are twice as likely to click, which can help drive more traffic.
So add the preferred source icon to your site and encourage users to sign up. You can make Search Engine Land a preferred source by clicking here.
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