Google gives publishers a new way to fight AI-driven traffic losses | TechCrunch

Google is giving publishers a new button that lets readers make them a preferred source across Search, Discover, and Google News, potentially boosting their traffic as AI search sends fewer clicks to the web.

As AI continues to kill traffic to websites, Google on Thursday threw a bone to those publishers negatively impacted by the change. It’s now allowing readers to push a button on a publisher’s website to indicate it’s a “favorite source” they’d like to see highlighted more often across Google Search, Discover, and Google News.

The tech giant said it’s making this new, interactive “Preferred Sources” button available to online publishers to embed on their own websites.

The launch follows Google’s rollout of Preferred Sources in May to Google’s AI experiences, including AI Mode and AI Overviews. The option was previously available in Top Stories.

The idea is to make it easier for readers to find links from the sites they know and trust when they’re searching for content or interacting with Google’s AI to learn about a topic or read the latest news. As of May’s launch, the company said that people across the web had already selected over 345,000 unique sources through this method.

To add a site as a favorite publisher, you can visit Google’s source preferences page, then search for a publisher by name or website.

Becoming a preferred source can drive more traffic to publishers’ websites, Google said. In earlier studies, it found that people are twice as likely to click through to a preferred source when available. By offering publishers these additional tools, Google is trying to assuage the damage that the rapid growth of AI-powered search features has had on traffic-dependent businesses.

Alongside the new button, Google said that readers will soon be able to customize their Discover feed in Google’s app in their own words. To use this feature, readers will tap any three-dot menu in the feed and then tell Google what topics they’d like to see more or less of, using natural language commands. This helps Google refine the feed in real-time.

The search giant is not the only company turning to AI to offer feed-tuning tools powered by AI. In recent months, a number of top social media apps have launched user-controlled algorithms that allow people to fine-tune the content that is recommended to them.

In addition to personalizing the Discover feed, Google says Android users will be able to customize their audio daily briefings in the Google News app, as well.