Google quietly rolled out a user-level tuning knob for news on August 12, 2025: a feature called Preferred Sources that lets you tell Search which outlets you want to see more often in the “Top stories” area. It’s simple in aim but important in implication — a small bit of control for readers at a moment when the mechanics of discovery are changing fast.

When a topic is breaking or in the news, Google’s results page shows a Top stories carousel — a quick way to scan reporting from multiple publishers. Now you’ll see a star-like icon next to that Top stories label; click it, search for the outlets you prefer, add them, then refresh the results. Google says those sites will be shown more prominently in Top stories and may get a dedicated “From your sources” section on the page. There’s no cap on how many outlets you can add, and if you tested the option in Google Labs earlier this summer, your choices carry over.

For readers, this is obviously convenient: your favourite local paper, a niche blog you trust on a hobby topic, or a single national outlet you follow can bubble toward the front of search results when they have fresh coverage. For publishers, Google even provides a small toolkit so newsrooms can prompt their readers to add the site as a preferred source.

The launch arrives in the middle of an intense industry conversation about how Google’s newer AI features — “AI Overviews,” “AI Mode,” and similar summary-style results — are reworking the flow of traffic from search pages to publishers’ websites. Google pushed back in early August, arguing that overall organic click volume to sites has been “relatively stable” year-over-year and that it’s actually sending slightly more quality clicks than a year ago. That defense hasn’t quieted critics, but it’s the context in which Preferred Sources appears: a user-facing personalization tool that, at least publicly, doesn’t rely on generative AI.

Google first tested the idea in Labs earlier this summer; reports from outlets covering the trial say Google started experiments around June. During that test period, many users picked multiple outlets (Google notes more than half of early testers chose four or more), and the company says the feature “rolled out today” for U.S. and India English-language users and will be widely available in the days after the announcement.

Will Google expand Preferred Sources globally? Probably — the company framed the launch as a broader customization option and has rolled similar experiments out more widely when they stuck. Whether the feature meaningfully changes referral patterns for publishers depends on adoption rates and on how Google’s AI features evolve. For now, Preferred Sources is a clear win for people who want more editorial control over what they see in search results — but it’s only one small tool in a much bigger, messy conversation about discovery, monetization, and the health of the open web.