Google announced a set of updates on Thursday to help customize your Search, Discover, and Google News experience.
For Search, Google is introducing its own Preferred Sources button that publishers can embed on their site pages. Once you choose your Preferred Sources, Google will prioritize coverage from those publications in Top Stories, AI Overviews, and AI Mode.
The feature began rolling out in September, but the process was tedious for both publishers and readers. Now, publishers can embed the Google-provided button, while readers can click it once, confirm their selection, and return to the page they were already browsing.
In the Discover feed on the Google app, the company will soon debut an AI prompt box where you can describe the kind of articles you’d like to see more of. The upcoming feature will make customizing the Discover feed as easy as “it is to text a friend,” Google says.
When available, the prompt box will pop up as you scroll through the feed. You can also tap any three-dot button in a tile and tell “Google the exact topics or links you want to see more (or less) of.” The feed will remember your requests, adapt to them immediately, and show content that matches your current interests.
A similar update is also coming to audio briefings in the Google News app on Android. You can now choose the topics you’d like to hear in the morning and deep dive into some of the key stories.
Google’s new customization tools arrive at a time when publishers are losing traffic to AI-powered responses. Users have already selected nearly 600,000 unique sites as Preferred Sources, the company said.
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