Google's AI features have been changing how publishers get traffic for more than a year. Its latest answer is surprisingly simple: give readers a button.
Google announced Thursday that publishers can now embed a "Preferred Sources" button directly on their own websites. Readers who click it can mark that site as a favorite, which Google says will give it more visibility across Search, Discover and Google News.
The Traffic Problem This Is Meant to Fix
AI Overviews and AI Mode answer search queries directly on the results page, often without sending readers to the sites the information came from. That shift has put pressure on traffic-dependent publishers, particularly those that rely heavily on Google search referrals.
Preferred Sources already existed inside Google's own AI experiences since May. Readers could select favorite sites there, and more than 345,000 unique sources have already been chosen that way across the web.
The new embeddable button just moves that same functionality onto publishers' own pages, instead of requiring readers to find Google's separate preferences page on their own.
How the Button Actually Works
Readers can also go directly to Google's source preferences page and search for a publisher by name or website to add them manually.
Google says the payoff is real. In its own studies, the company found readers are twice as likely to click through to a source they've marked as preferred compared to one they haven't.
That figure comes from Google's own research, rather than an independent study. It shows that the preference can influence click behavior, but doesn't tell us how many readers will actively use the feature or how much additional traffic publishers can realistically expect.
A Second Tool: Talking to Your Feed
Google paired the button with a second change: natural language control over the Discover feed in its app.
Readers will be able to tap a three-dot menu and tell Google, in their own words, what topics they want to see more or less of. Google says the feed adjusts in real time based on that input.
The same idea is showing up elsewhere in tech right now. Several major social platforms have rolled out user-controlled recommendation algorithms in recent months, letting people describe what they want their feed to prioritize rather than relying entirely on engagement signals.
Why This Matters More Than It Sounds
A favorites button doesn't undo what AI Overviews have already done to publisher traffic. It gives readers who already trust a specific site a slightly easier way to keep finding it, which is a narrower fix than the scale of the underlying problem.
Google's own data suggests the effect is real for the publishers readers actually choose. Whether enough readers bother to click the button in the first place is the open question neither Google's announcement nor the reported numbers fully answer yet.
The 345,000 figure sounds substantial, but Google's search ecosystem operates at a vastly larger scale. A feature that requires readers to actively choose a publisher will naturally reach a much smaller audience than an algorithmic change affecting every search.
What This Means for Miami
Miami's publishers are operating in the same uncomfortable transition as media companies everywhere: Google remains one of the biggest sources of discovery, while Google's AI products increasingly answer questions without requiring a click.
Preferred Sources doesn't reverse that trend. What it does is give publishers another way to turn an existing reader relationship into a signal Google can recognize.
For a local publication such as MAIN, that's potentially valuable. A reader who deliberately tells Google they want Miami AI coverage from a particular source is giving Google a much stronger signal than a generic search click ever could.
The catch is that the reader has to make the choice first.
That's ultimately what makes this experiment interesting. Google isn't promising publishers their old traffic back. It's asking them to persuade readers that they're worth following.
