Google’s new Preferred Sources feature for Search is a promising idea in the wrong place. Giving people the power to promote outlets they trust is smart, but Search is a general-purpose tool. The two Google products that actually live or die by publisher quality are News and Discover — and they’re the ones that desperately need this control.
Search isn’t a news app
Search excels at breadth, not loyalty. Even power users turn to operators like “site:” when they want a specific outlet. According to the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report, roughly a third of people now use search engines weekly to find news, but most don’t want their searches to be pre-filtered by a static roster of favorites. They want fast, neutral retrieval — not a curated feed disguised as a results page.
There’s also the experience problem. Search is already dense with Top Stories, People also ask, and other modules. Preferred Sources in Search nudges even more content above traditional results. That may be fine for some, but it piles complexity onto a page that’s supposed to be a direct path to answers.
Google News needs real “preferred” controls
Google News is built for news discovery and should be the testing ground for Preferred Sources. The app has a Following tab and topic toggles, but those signals barely steer the main feed. If I explicitly follow a publication, I should see more of it by default without digging into a secondary tab.
News literacy groups like the Trust Project and NewsGuard emphasize transparent sourcing and editorial standards. Preferred Sources could let readers elevate outlets that meet those criteria for them, aligning the feed with personal trust judgments while still surfacing diverse perspectives. Think “your sources first, then related coverage,” not a walled garden.
Discover is the bigger problem on phones
Discover, the personalized feed on Android and Google’s mobile surfaces, has an even stronger case. It can be a firehose of clicky headlines, recycled rumor posts, or AI-spun pages that look credible at a glance. Publishers and analytics firms have long noted that Discover traffic is powerful but volatile; for some news sites it can swing from a trickle to a major share of mobile referrals in a week, then vanish.
A Preferred Sources control in Discover could reduce that whiplash for readers. Give users a way to pin trusted outlets per topic — sports from a hometown paper, health from a public-service newsroom, tech from vetted reviewers — and let the algorithm fill the gaps with context from reputable neighbors, not random content mills.
How Preferred Sources should work
Start simple: a clear, account-level list of publishers and topics that boosts, not blocks. Allow per-topic overrides, because a user’s preferred sources for climate science may differ from business or entertainment. Provide transparent labels in cards — “Prioritized from your sources” — so people understand why they’re seeing an article.
Respect privacy by offering on-device storage for the list with optional cloud sync, and export/import to avoid lock-in. For quality signals, lean on existing structures Google already recognizes — publisher reputation in Google News, structured data, original reporting indicators, and editorial transparency metrics identified by industry bodies. Crucially, keep a “reset” and a “surprise me” toggle to avoid overfitting.
Geographic rollouts matter. Early testing in limited markets for Search shows Google is still tuning the feature. Moving the pilot to News and Discover in a few regions would gather cleaner feedback from people who actually want curated news feeds and are typically logged in anyway.
Why it helps users and publishers
For readers, the benefit is straightforward: fewer low-quality surprises and more of the reporting you value. Considering Google commands the majority of global mobile search share, even a modest shift toward user-led curation inside News and Discover would reshape what millions see by default.
For publishers, Preferred Sources could reward sustained investment in original reporting and trust-building. Outlets that disclose authorship, correct transparently, and consistently add value would become stickier choices in users’ lists. That’s a healthier incentive than chasing the opaque volatility of feed algorithms.
Preferred Sources is the right feature. Put it where preference matters most: in Google News and Discover. Give people a steerable feed, preserve serendipity, and let trust — not tricks — decide what rises to the top.