Google Preferred Sources: brand trust becomes a measurable SEO signal
With Google Preferred Sources, searchers indicate for themselves which websites they want to see more often in Top stories. According to Google, more than 200,000 sites have already been chosen worldwide, and readers click through to a source they have marked themselves twice as often. Since 30 April 2026, the feature has worked in every language, including Dutch. This article sets out what Google itself documents, what does not hold up in the stories doing the rounds about it, and what you can do with it today as a business.
~/.claude/skills/ or into .claude/skills/ within your project. Claude will then recognise the skill automatically for this topic, or you can call it with /merkvermeldingen-inventarisatie.AGENTS.md, or add it to your repo as a separate file and refer to it from AGENTS.md. Codex reads that with every session.
How a preferred source works
reg. P.001Preferred Sources is not a bookmark and not a subscription, but a direct instruction to Google: I trust this source, show me more of it. The whole route from marking to result consists of four steps, and the most important part is the last one: only the person who chooses you sees you more often. For everyone who does not, nothing changes.
From experiment to every language
reg. P.002The feature has been rolled out in stages, and that sequence says something about how seriously Google takes it. What began as a trial in Search Labs is, just over a year later, live worldwide, in every language Google Search supports. All the data below comes from Google's own announcements and documentation; where something does not come from that source, this article says so.
Do you qualify?
reg. P.003The conditions are short but unforgiving, and one of them affects plenty of businesses directly. Only complete domains and subdomains can become a preferred source. A blog that sits in a subfolder is therefore excluded, however good the content is. Check this before you do anything else.
Where is your brand already mentioned?
reg. P.004Nobody marks a site they do not know. Before the deep link delivers anything, your brand has to come from somewhere: from mentions. The skill accompanying this article maps them in three rings and turns them into an action list. This is the same thinking we apply when we look at a brand's findability, except now you do it yourself, with AI as your analyst.
Why brand trust is becoming a search signal
Traditional SEO revolves around three pillars: technology, content and authority. All three are weighed by an algorithm. Preferred Sources adds something fundamentally different: a button through which the searcher expresses trust themselves. Google has always said that experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness matter, the E-E-A-T framework from the quality rater guidelines, but that stayed intangible for site owners. You could not steer it and you could not see it. A preferred source is the first place where that vague notion of trust becomes a concrete action: someone chooses you, by name.
That fits a broader shift
In those same rater guidelines, Google asks its raters to look beyond a site at what others write about a company. Reputation was therefore already part of how quality gets weighed; what is new is that users now have a direct voice in it themselves. And with the rise of AI Overviews and zero-click search NL, the question of who gets cited and trusted only becomes more important: an AI answer has to point somewhere, and the Preferred Sources documentation explicitly states that chosen sources can carry a preferred label in AI Overviews and AI Mode for the searcher who chose them.
There is also an indirect effect that has nothing to do with the feature itself
A brand people know gets searched for by name more often, and such branded searches are a sign of exactly the trust you want to build. How you become visible in AI answers, and why that rests on the same foundations as classic findability, is covered in more depth in getting found in AI Overviews and ChatGPT NL. We continuously measure what AI systems say about your brand with the AI Index NL: per sector, we put the same questions to a language model and count which companies get mentioned. Want that measured and improved for your own brand? That is AI visibility.
Important to add: none of this makes Preferred Sources a classic ranking factor
The feature personalises what one searcher sees. Anyone claiming that markings raise your positions for everyone is claiming something Google documents nowhere. The honest story is more indirect and slower: trust produces markings, markings produce returning readers, and returning readers are the most valuable visitors there are.
What you can already do today
The first and easiest step: place the deep link. The URL google.com/preferences/source?q=yourdomain.com opens the preferences window for your domain directly. Put it where your regular visitors come: at the bottom of articles, in the footer, on your contact page. If there is no ready-made Google button for your language, write the text yourself; something like "see us more often on Google" says enough. It matters that you explain what happens, because the feature is new and most visitors do not know it yet.
The second place is your newsletter
Subscribers have already chosen to follow you, so the step to a marking is small. Put the link in your welcome email and repeat it occasionally with a short explanation. The same applies to any contact moment you already have: if you ask customers for a review once a job is finished, for example as described in asking for a Google review via WhatsApp NL, the preference link can travel along in that same message. One contact moment, two small requests that both capture trust.
Also take care of the places where that trust begins
Your Google Business Profile is often a local business's first introduction to your brand; a complete profile with real photos does quiet work there. And the site itself has to deliver what a preferred source promises: publishing something worthwhile on a regular basis. Watch out here for the pitfall of the big promise: a fixed publishing rhythm is valuable, but do not promise yourself a weekly frequency you cannot keep up. A source that falls silent for three months shows up nowhere, however many markings it has.
Finally, the basics
Preferred Sources does not compensate for technical problems: your site has to be indexed and simply work well. If you are unsure about that, first have the free SEO scan look at your site or check the fundamentals via technical SEO NL. How all of this fits into a complete approach, from technology to brand building, is covered under improving your SEO.
Mentions: the family backlinks belong to
Anyone who has been in SEO for a while recognises the pattern: becoming a preferred source looks suspiciously similar to earning a good backlink. In both cases, someone else expresses trust in you, in both cases you cannot force it, and in both cases buying it backfires. The difference is who chooses: with a link, an editor or site owner; with a preferred source, the reader themselves. What a backlink actually is, and why it still counts, you can read in what is link building NL; the complete approach to earning more of them is covered in getting more backlinks NL.
The mention without a link has long been underestimated
A trade magazine article that names your company without linking, a guide that recommends you, a partner who mentions you on their site: they are all traces of the same trust, and they are exactly the traces that both Google's quality raters and AI systems lean on. That is why the skill accompanying this article starts not with links but with mentions in the broad sense. The inventory then shows on its own where a link is realistic: we take that work on within link building, and how an editorial placement comes about with us is covered under the backlink network NL.
And sometimes the outcome of the inventory is that you should not start with mentions at all
A site that answers the search query better than the competition can also climb without any new external signals; how that works is covered in ranking higher in Google without backlinks. The honest order stays the same as ever: first a site that is worth it, only then tell the world about it. Want more of this kind of well-founded explanation? Our knowledge base is full of it.
What we do not know for certain, and what is doing the rounds
A cloud of half-truths always forms around new Google features, and that deserves its own paragraph. Three things you come across online that do not come from Google's own documentation. One: that Preferred Sources also affects Google Discover. In its documentation and announcements, Google only mentions Top stories, plus the preferred label in AI Overviews and AI Mode; Discover is not among them. An earlier version of this article claimed that too, incidentally, and it could not be substantiated. Two: that markings raise your ordinary organic positions. Documented nowhere. Three: exact numbers of how many sites in any one country have already been chosen. Google only publishes the worldwide total of over 200,000.
What we do know for certain comes from two sources: the documentation on Google Search Central, with the subfolder rule and the deep link format, and Google's announcement at the language expansion of 30 April 2026, with the two figures used in this article: over 200,000 chosen sites and a doubled click-through chance to self-chosen sources. That last figure is about users who had already chosen, and therefore says nothing about how easy it is to get chosen in the first place.
And what nobody knows, us included: how heavily this signal will ever weigh outside personalisation, whether Google extends the feature to other parts of Search, and how quickly searchers will start using it. So be wary of anyone selling certainty here; how to spot such sellers is covered in choosing an SEO agency NL. For anyone who also wants to explain their site to machines, llms.txt is a related topic in the same category: promising, but tell the honest story alongside it.
Frequently asked questions
What are Google Preferred Sources?
A feature in Google Search that lets you indicate for yourself which websites you want to see more often in Top stories. You tap the star next to Top stories, look up a site by name and add it to your list. Since 30 April 2026, the feature has worked worldwide in every language Google Search supports, including Dutch.
Does Preferred Sources also work in ordinary search results?
Google documents no effect there. The feature works with Top stories, and for users who have chosen a source, a preferred label can appear next to that source in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Any claim about influence on ordinary organic positions is interpretation, not a documented fact.
Does my website qualify as a preferred source?
Yes, if your site is indexed by Google and sits at domain level or subdomain level. A site such as yourbusiness.co.uk or blog.yourbusiness.co.uk qualifies, a subfolder such as yourbusiness.co.uk/blog/ does not. That subfolder rule is stated word for word in Google's documentation and is the first checkpoint for many businesses.
How do I ask visitors to mark my site?
Google offers a fixed deep link: google.com/preferences/source?q=yourdomain.com. That opens the preferences window for your domain directly. Put that link on your site, in your newsletter and anywhere you already have contact with regular readers or customers. Google also has ready-made buttons, but those exist in only sixteen languages, and Dutch is not among them, so if there is no ready-made button for your language, you simply write the button text yourself.
Can I see how many people have chosen me as a preferred source?
No. Google does not currently offer any reporting for that, not in Search Console and not anywhere else. You can only look indirectly: if the click-through rate in Search Console's performance reports changes while your content and positions stay the same, user preference may be playing a role in that. You will never know for certain, and anyone who promises you a measurement is selling something that does not exist.
Is this only interesting for news sites?
No, but the gain currently sits with sites that regularly publish topical content, because Top stories mostly appear for topical subjects. Google reports that more than 200,000 different sites have already been chosen, from small niche sites to major newsrooms. If your site rarely or never publishes anything topical, the direct impact is small, and the feature is mainly a reason to work on brand trust.
Start with the inventory, not the button
The temptation is to place a deep link today and wait. Go ahead, it takes five minutes, but realise that the button only works for people who already trust you. The real work is building that trust, and that starts with knowing where your brand stands today: which mentions exist, which are wrong, and where your competitors are visible and you are not. Download the free skill at the top of this article for that, and let Claude or Codex build the inventory with you. Want us to look at the bigger picture of your findability with you? That is possible via the contact page or with a free scan; you will find all the other tools we have built under skills NL.