Google is introducing new features for Search, AI Mode in Google Search, and Gemini that will show you more of your subscribed news sources in your feed.
Google News and Google Search are still widely used by people to consume news. Earlier, Google launched a feature that allowed users to mark their favourite news outlets and publications as Preferred Sources, ranking them higher in search results when users looked up trending topics.
At first, the feature was limited to the United States and India, but Google just announced that it’s expanding Preferred Sources to all English-language users in the coming days and to all languages early next year. The company says that when someone marks an outlet as a Preferred Source, they tend to click that site twice as much on average, so now more users will benefit from this feature.
Preferred Sources get to all English language users
Google will also start surfacing the subscribed websites you pay for more often across Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews. The company is rolling out a new feature that highlights links from your paid subscriptions when you’re using AI Mode or asking Gemini about a trending topic.
With AI Mode, users no longer visit some websites like they used to, as they now rely on the selected websites that pop up on their screen. Google addresses this issue by launching an update that will more prominently highlight links to the web in AI Mode. Users can interact with those pages easily with more inline links.
By rolling out this update, Google wishes to give users more control over what news they consume and from which sources. At the same time, it also maintains engagement for other outlets even with users relying on AI Mode.
