What changed when Google let you pick the sites that show up first?

A button that pins a publisher to your results

The new "Preferred Sources" button sits on a publisher's own page. When a reader clicks it, the site gets added to that reader's Preferred Sources list on Google and the reader stays on the same article. The next time that reader searches, the publisher appears more often in Top Stories, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. Mrinalini Loew, General Manager of Google Search Ecosystem, wrote that people have already selected more than 600,000 unique sources. Publishers who want the button copy the embed code from Google Search Central documentation.

The feature does not require a Google account sign-in flow on the publisher side. The click handles the association and returns the reader instantly.

Discover learns from a sentence you type

A second change targets the Discover feed inside the Google app. In the coming days a three-dot menu on any card will open a text field. You type what you want more or less of — "kitchen reno ideas (eco-friendly only)" or "videos about weekend road trips (but no camping)" — and the feed adjusts on the fly. The system remembers the request. No slider, no topic taxonomy, no hidden settings page.

The announcement says the feed will connect you with content that genuinely matches what you care about right now. It does not say how long the memory lasts or whether a typed instruction can be deleted later.

Audio briefings you assemble yourself

The third update lives in the Google News app on Android. You now choose specific topics for your daily audio briefing. Each story comes with clear source attribution and a link to the full article. Google mentions a "wide range of publishers participating in our news AI pilot program" that supply deeper dives for the briefing.

The briefing plays in the app. You can tap through to read. The post does not list which publishers are in the pilot, nor does it say whether the audio is generated by text-to-speech or recorded by the publishers themselves.

What the announcement does not cover

The blog post gives no rollout timeline beyond "coming days" for the Discover text field. It does not say whether Preferred Sources work across devices when you are signed out. It does not explain how the system weighs a preferred source against freshness or authority signals. It does not mention any new privacy controls tied to the typed Discover instructions. It does not state whether the audio briefing feature will reach iOS or the web. The numbers stop at 600,000 unique sources selected so far.