Google Preferred Sources Explained: Pick Which Sites Show Up in Your AI Overviews

Google announced three personalization changes across Search, Discover and Google News on August 20, 2026. One of them is the first real dial an ordinary person has been handed over what their AI Overviews say: Preferred Sources, a free setting where you tick the publications you trust and Google leans toward them.

It is a thumb on the scale, not a filter. Nothing gets blocked, and Google is careful to say your picks make a site "more likely to appear" rather than guaranteed. But it is free, it takes about a minute, and it is the only control Google currently offers over the AI answer that now sits above your search results.

Key Takeaways

• Preferred Sources is live now, on every platform. Google publishes the same setting path for computer, Android and iPhone: profile picture, then "Search personalization", then "Source preferences".
• It reaches AI Overviews and AI Mode, not just news. Google's help article states the link in both directions: picking sources in one place "also tailors" the other.
• It is free and needs no plan. No subscription is named in the announcement, the help article or the publisher documentation. You do need to be signed in.
• What is actually new today is the button. Google is releasing an interactive "Preferred Sources" button that publishers can embed, so one click on a news site adds it and returns you to where you were reading.
• People have already picked 600,000-plus sources. Google's own figure for how many unique sites have been selected so far.
• Discover free-text tuning is not here yet. Google says "in the coming days in the Google app" you will be able to type what you want more or less of into any card's three-dot menu.
• Custom audio news briefings are Android-only. Google names the Google News app on Android and nothing else.
• You can switch all of this off. Turning off "Personalized Recommendations" disables personalized results, and Google confirms it does not delete your stored activity.

What Changed on August 20, 2026: Availability at a Glance

Three separate things shipped, and only two of them are usable today. Here is where each one actually stands, per Google's announcement, its Search help article and its publisher documentation:

The AI Overviews and AI Mode row is the one to read twice. Preferred Sources itself has no country list, but the features it feeds do: Google publishes separate country, territory and language lists for AI Overviews and for AI Mode. If AI Mode has not reached your country or language, setting a preferred source cannot conjure it up.

How to Set Your Preferred Sources

Two routes, both about a minute, and they feed the same list. Google publishes identical steps for computer, Android and iPhone in its Preferred Sources help article, so nothing below is platform-specific.

From your Google account settings, which is the route most people should use:

1. Go to google.com or open the Google app.
2. At the top right, select your profile picture or initial.
3. Go to "Search personalization", then "Source preferences".
4. Search for a publication you want more of.
5. Select its checkbox. Your saved picks appear under "Your sources" at the bottom of the screen.

From a live search result, if you would rather see it working:

1. Search for something significant that has happened recently.
2. If the "Top stories" section appears, click the cards star icon to the right of the "Top stories" header.
3. Search for the sources you want and tick them.
4. Click "Reload results".

Google adds one caveat worth knowing before you go hunting: "Sources that aren't updated regularly may not be available." A small site that publishes twice a year may simply not be in the tool. And your choices follow you: Google says that if you are signed in when you save, "your settings stay the same in every browser you sign into."

What Preferred Sources Actually Does to Your Results

It weights, it does not filter. This is the single most important thing to get straight, because the feature invites the assumption that you are building a personal news wall, and you are not.

Google's publisher documentation is the most precise statement of the effect anywhere: when a user selects a site, "your content is more likely to appear in 'Top Stories', highlighted with a 'preferred' badge. In AI Mode and AI Overviews, your content can be highlighted with a 'preferred' badge for users who have selected your site as a preferred source."

Three things follow from that wording:

• Nothing is blocked. Sites you did not pick keep appearing. There is no block list in this tool.
• "More likely" is not "always". Google's ranking still decides. A preferred source that has not covered your query does not get invented into the results.
• The badge is the visible part. In AI Overviews and AI Mode, the effect Google commits to in writing is the "preferred" label on content from sites you chose, which at least tells you where an AI answer is drawing from.

There is one eligibility rule that catches people out: only whole sites and subdomains can be preferred sources, never sections of a site. Google's example is that https://www.example.com/ and https://code.example.com/ are eligible, but https://www.example.com/blog is not. You cannot prefer one column of a newspaper.

The New Button, and Why You Will Start Seeing It Everywhere

From today, publishers can drop a Google-styled "Preferred Sources" button straight onto their pages. Google describes the reader experience plainly: clicking 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."

For a reader that is genuinely convenient, and it is also why this feature is about to become very visible. Google's documentation gives publishers three ways in, including a two-line JavaScript snippet that renders an automatically localized button, and a plain deeplink for sites whose systems cannot run it. That deeplink can go in "social posts, email newsletters, or promotions", so expect the ask to arrive by email as well as on the page.

Treat those buttons the way you would treat any other one-click preference: it is a real setting change on your Google Account, not a like. Google says people have already selected more than 600,000 unique sources, which is the only usage figure it has published for the feature.

The Other Two Changes: Discover and Audio News

Both are smaller, and one of them you cannot use yet.

Discover, in your own words (not yet). Google says that "in the coming days in the Google app", you will be able to tap the three-dot menu on any card in your feed and type the exact topics or links you want more or less of. Its examples are the useful kind: "kitchen reno ideas (eco-friendly only)", "videos about weekend road trips (but no camping)". Google says the feed "will adjust on the fly, and remember your requests". No date, no country list, and no confirmation of whether it lands on iPhone at the same time as Android.

If you want to steer Discover today, the existing controls still work: Google's Discover help article covers following and unfollowing interests, and notes that you need Search Services History and personalized recommendations turned on for any of it to apply. That article also carries the standard caveat that "some of these features might not be available in all languages and countries."

Audio news briefings (Android only). In the Google News app on Android, you can now curate your daily audio briefing by choosing specific topics, and Google says the briefing carries "clear source attribution and links out to full articles". Google published no help article for this at the time of writing, so the announcement is the only source for it.

Should You Turn Any of This On?

Yes to Preferred Sources, if you read news through Google at all. It costs nothing, it takes a minute, and it is the only lever you currently have over the AI summary that sits above your search results. Pick five or six publications you would actually trust to be right about something that matters, and you have made your AI Overviews slightly more accountable.

Skip it if you mostly use Google for practical lookups rather than news. The feature is aimed squarely at Top Stories and news-shaped queries, and it will not change what you get when you search for a recipe or a train time.

And if you want less personalization rather than more, that control is separate and it is a bigger switch. Google's personalization help article says that turning off "Personalized Recommendations" while signed in, or "Search customization" while signed out, stops personalized results "and any features that depend on personalization". Usefully, it also spells out what turning it off does not do: it does not pause or delete stored activity, does not remove saved items, and does not change language or search settings. Deleting activity is a separate control in your Google Account's data and privacy settings.

One more thing to keep separate in your head, because Google uses similar words for different products: this is source and feed personalization, which is not the same as Personal Intelligence, Google's system for letting its AI read your own Gmail and Calendar. Preferred Sources touches nothing you own. It only tells Google whose journalism you would rather read.

The bottom line: Preferred Sources is a small, free, genuinely useful control, and today's change makes it one click away on the sites you already read. It nudges rather than filters, it needs no subscription, and it is currently the closest thing Google offers to editing your own AI Overviews. The Discover half of the announcement is worth waiting for; the audio half is worth trying if you are on Android. If you would rather Google guessed less about you, the off switch is in the same settings menu, one level up. For where Google's paid tiers actually earn their keep, our guide to which AI chatbot is worth paying for works through the trade-offs, and none of this is behind them.