Hello and happy Friday! Quick question: when someone Googles a business like yours, who decides which sites they see more of? For a long time, the honest answer was Google’s ranking systems and nothing else. You optimized, you published, you waited, and Google made the call. That is changing, and it is changing in a way you can actually influence.

This week, our Senior SEO Strategist Barb Senkala breaks down Google Preferred Sources and how to use it to get selected in AI search. Watch the full video above to learn more.

If you have heard people mention Preferred Sources and you are not sure whether it matters for your business, you are in the right place. It is one of the few levers where a real person can tell Google, directly, that they want to see more of you. And that signal now follows them into AI Overviews and AI Mode. We have already started rolling this out for clients as a first-month task, so everything here is straight from what we are doing right now, not theory.

What Google Preferred Sources Actually Is

There is some confusion out there, so let’s clear it up. Preferred Sources is a user-controlled feature. A person searching on Google selects the publishers and websites they want to see more of, much like following an account or subscribing to an RSS feed. Once someone selects you, your content is more likely to show up for them, and a preferred badge appears next to your name so they know it is a site they chose.

Here is the part that trips people up. This is not code. It is not schema. There is no markup to install, no plugin, no developer ticket. It is a signal from real people who want more of your content. That is a very different thing from most of what we talk about in SEO, where the work happens on your side of the screen. With this one, the action happens on your audience’s side. Your job is to make the ask, and to make it easy.

The feature launched back in August of 2025, and at first it only lived inside the Top Stories box, the news section that pops up for timely topics. If that were still the whole story, most local businesses could safely ignore it. A plumber in Denver or a clinic in Colorado Springs does not live in Top Stories, so for a couple of years, this sat firmly in the news-publisher world. But that is not the whole story anymore, and that is exactly why we are talking about it now. What started as a news feature has quietly become something every business should care about.

Why This Matters Now That It Reaches AI Search

Here is the big update, and it is the reason we made this video. That preferred badge now appears in AI Mode and AI Overviews, not just in Top Stories. More and more searches end in an AI answer instead of a plain list of blue links. The user reads the summary, gets what they need, and never scrolls. If you want to be visible, you have to be present where those answers get built, not just where the old ten blue links used to sit.

Preferred Sources is one of the few ways a real person can directly tell Google they want to see more of you, and that preference now carries into AI search. Think about what that means. Most of AI search visibility is out of your direct control. You influence it through content quality, entity authority, and the signals Google reads about your brand. This is one of the rare spots where a human can put a thumb on the scale for you, on purpose.

It is also a global signal now, available in every language where Google runs. So this is no longer some small US-only news experiment. It is live, broad, and applicable to the kind of local service businesses we work with every day.

We want to be clear about one thing, because it keeps people honest. This works alongside Google’s normal ranking systems. It does not override relevance. You still have to publish fresh, useful content that is not just a copy of everyone else’s for any of this to pay off. Preferred Sources does not let you skip the work. It rewards the businesses already doing the work by giving their most loyal readers a way to raise their hand.

Think about the audience angle too, because this is where it gets interesting. Every person who selects you is a returning visitor and a signal of trust. That ties straight into E-E-A-T, which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. A loyal audience that keeps choosing you is exactly the kind of signal that compounds over time. One selection is nice. A steady stream of them, from people who actually use your business, tells Google something durable about who you are. So this helps you show up and build the kind of audience that keeps showing up.

How to Check If Your Site Is Even Eligible

The first question is always the same: can my site even do this? Good news, you can answer it in about 30 seconds before you promote anything.

Go to the Google source preferences tool and type in your URL. When Barb checked Boulder SEO Marketing in the video, we showed up on the list, and from there you simply check the box. If your site appears, you are eligible and ready to start guiding people to pick you. No application, no approval queue, no waiting.

There is one important rule about which sites qualify, and it catches people off guard. Eligibility is at the domain and subdomain level only. Your main domain works. A subdomain like blog.yoursite.com works. But a subdirectory like yoursite.com/blog does not qualify on its own. That distinction matters, because plenty of businesses run their blog as a subfolder and would reasonably assume they are covered when they are not. Check the exact setup you have before you build a campaign around it.

If your site does not show up in the tool yet, do not panic. Keep publishing fresh, relevant content, because eligibility follows the same signals that earn you visibility in the first place. The tool is a checkpoint, not a wall. Keep doing the fundamentals and your eligibility tends to follow.

Getting People to Actually Select You

Once you have confirmed you are eligible, the real work begins, and it is the part most businesses miss. Being eligible does nothing on its own. You have to actually get people to select you. Here is exactly what we do for clients to turn eligibility into selections.

First, use the deep link. Google provides a deep link on their developer blog that takes someone straight to the selection screen for your site. It follows the pattern of the source preferences URL, with your website appended at the end. You drop that link everywhere your audience already is: your blog posts, your email newsletter, your social posts, and your Google Business Profile updates. A simple line does the job. Something like: Want to see more from us in Google? Select us as a preferred source, with the link right there. No clever copywriting required.

Second, add a button to your website. Google publishes official preferred source button assets you can download in 16 languages, or you can design your own. Put it right next to your other follow and subscribe buttons so it becomes part of how people connect with you, not a one-off ask buried somewhere on a forgotten page.

Third, make the ask part of your routine. The people most likely to select you are the ones who already know and trust you, so ask your existing readers and customers first. This is exactly why we have built it into our first month checklist for new clients. A new blog post goes live, the preferred source call to action goes on it, and the deep link goes into the next newsletter. It becomes a habit, not a one-time task. That is the whole playbook: confirm eligibility, then make it easy and obvious for people to pick you.

The Questions Clients Ask Us Most

A few questions come up every time we walk a client through this, so let’s hit them head-on.

Will this guarantee I show up in AI Overviews? No, it will not. Nothing does. It improves your chances for the people who selected you, but it never overrides relevance. Good content still comes first, every time.

Do I need a developer to set this up? No. There is no code involved. You are promoting a link and adding a button. The setup is marketing, not engineering, which means your team can act on this today without waiting on a dev queue or a sprint.

Is this just for news sites? It did start in Top Stories, which leans toward news, but the source preference and that preferred badge now extend to AI Mode and AI Overviews. That helps any kind of business, including the local service companies we work with every day. Simple feature, real upside, almost no setup cost.

What to Do Next

Here is what to take away. Preferred Sources is real people choosing to see more of your site, and that choice now carries a preferred badge into AI Overviews and AI Mode, not just Top Stories. Check your eligibility in about 30 seconds with the source preferences tool, remembering that only domain and subdomain sites qualify, not subdirectories. Then get selected by sharing your deep link and adding a preferred source button across your blog, newsletter, social, and Google Business Profile. And remember, it works alongside ranking and never replaces good, useful content.

If you can only do one thing today, check your eligibility and drop the deep link into your next newsletter. That single move puts the choice in front of the people most likely to say yes, and it costs you almost nothing to try. Build from there once you see it working, layering in the website button and the Google Business Profile updates as part of your normal monthly rhythm.

If you want our team to set up Preferred Sources for you and integrate it into your broader AI search strategy, book a call via the contact page at boulderseomarketing.com. And if this helped, subscribe so you catch our weekly SEO tip every Friday. We keep these short, practical, and built around what is actually working in AI search right now.

Have an amazing Friday and a great weekend.

Stay safe and healthy,

Cheers,

The Boulder SEO Marketing Team