Google Preferred Sources Now Supports All Languages Globally

Google expanded its Preferred Sources feature to all supported languages on 30 April 2026. The update follows a December 2025 global expansion that had already extended the feature to English-language users worldwide. All users can now set preferred publishers regardless of the language they use Google Search in.

What Preferred Sources is

Preferred Sources lets users mark specific publishers they want to see more often in Google Search results. At the time of this rollout the feature applied to Top Stories; Google extended it to AI Overviews and AI Mode a month later, on 27 May 2026. Marked sites appear more prominently when they publish content relevant to a user’s query. There is no approval process for publishers: any site can be marked by any user.

Correction, 21 August 2026: this paragraph originally said Preferred Sources applies “particularly in Top Stories and Google Discover”. Google Discover is not one of the feature’s surfaces. Google’s help documentation names Top Stories, AI Mode and AI Overviews, and does not mention Discover.

The feature sits outside the ranking algorithm in the traditional sense. Preferred Sources does not affect where a site ranks for a given query across all users. It creates a personalised boost for individual users who have explicitly selected that publisher.

The expansion timeline

Google launched Preferred Sources as a Search Labs experiment in June 2025 and made it generally available in the US and India, in English only, on 12 August 2025. It was part of a broader effort to give users more control over their news and content feeds.

In December 2025, Google made Preferred Sources available globally for all English-language users. The 30 April 2026 update removed the language restriction entirely, extending the same functionality to users searching in any language Google supports.

The CTR data

Google’s internal data shows that users are twice as likely to click through to a site they have marked as a preferred source compared to unmarked sites appearing in the same position. Over 200,000 unique sites have already been selected by users since launch.

Google also published downloadable “Add as preferred source” buttons in 16 languages, intended for editorial teams to place on their sites to prompt readers to mark them. This is one of the few times Google has provided a publisher-facing mechanism for influencing a specific search signal directly.

What this means for publishers

Preferred Sources is significant because it represents a path to durable search visibility that does not depend solely on ranking algorithms. A site that builds a meaningful base of users who have marked it as preferred is partially insulated from the ranking volatility that affects algorithmic results, including the click-through rate pressure from AI Overviews.

The 2x CTR figure is particularly relevant in the context of AI Overviews. On queries where AI Overviews appear, organic CTR has fallen sharply for most publishers. For users who have marked a site as preferred, that CTR penalty is at least partially offset by the preference signal.

Audience development, encouraging existing readers to mark a site in Preferred Sources, has become a direct input into search performance rather than a purely brand-building activity. Publishers with email lists, social audiences, or loyal readerships have an advantage here: they have channels through which to ask readers to take that action.

Sources

• Google’s Preferred Sources Is Now A Global SEO Signal — Search Engine Journal
• Google expands ‘Preferred Sources’ to everyone so you actually see your favorite sites — 9to5Google
• Google Preferred Sources Available For All Languages Globally — Search Roundtable
• Google updates preferred sources guide, doubling publisher click-through rates — PPC Land