Preferred Sources and the New Search Profile Badge

Two documentation additions a month apart have given publishers something they rarely get from Google: a supported way to ask an audience to choose them. The first landed on 20 August 2026, when Google updated the preferred sources documentation with instructions for a custom, interactive button you place on your own pages. The second arrived on 16 September 2026, a separate guide for adding a Search profile badge to your website. They are routinely confused, and they do different things.

What a preferred source does to a result

When a user marks your site as a preferred source, your content is more likely to appear in Top Stories, highlighted with a “preferred” badge. Since 27 May 2026 the feature reaches further: Google’s documentation now records that content can also carry the preferred badge in AI Mode and AI Overviews for users who have selected the site. The preferred sources documentation for site owners attaches a condition to that reach, which is easy to miss — to be eligible for display in those AI features, your site must be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console. A site that has excluded itself from AI Overviews and AI Mode cannot be a preferred source there.

The button Google documented on 20 August

The standard implementation is two lines of HTML. You load the preferred sources library with <script async src="https://news.google.com/swg/js/v1/publisher.js"></script>, ideally in the head, then place <div google-add-preferred-source-btn></div> wherever the button should render. Google renders an automatically localised, Google-styled button, and the user is returned to where they left off on your page rather than dumped into a settings screen.

Three variations are documented:

• Theme. The button is light by default; data-theme="dark" switches it.
• Language. It follows the user’s browser language unless you override it with data-lang and a supported language code.
• Custom triggers. An advanced path exposes the same flow through ES module imports or a script callback queue, so you can bind it to your own UI element instead of the standard badge.

There is also a deeplink option for platforms that cannot run the script, usable in a text link, a newsletter or a social post. Google is clear that none of this is required to appear as a preferred source; these are ways to guide an audience that would have to find the source preferences tool otherwise.

The badge is a different mechanism

A Search profile is a destination rather than a setting. It brings your content from across the web and social platforms into one place on Google, and when readers follow it, the content linked on that profile becomes more likely to appear for them in Discover. The guide to adding a Search profile badge is a short piece of implementation: claim the profile, take your profile URL in the form https://profile.google.com/@handle, download the badge assets and link to it, or use a plain text link in bylines and bios.

The brand guidance is more prescriptive than the markup. Keep the clickable target at least 48 by 48 dp on Android and 44 by 44 px on iOS and web, do not alter the supplied assets, and do not mix monochrome and colour badges. If you display both the Search profile button and the preferred sources badge, Google asks you to use the higher-emphasis labelled Search profile button so the two remain distinguishable.

Domain and subdomain only

One eligibility rule decides whether any of this is worth scheduling. Only domain-level and subdomain-level sites can appear in the source preferences tool. Google’s own example is that https://www.example.com/ and https://code.example.com/ qualify while the subdirectory https://www.example.com/blog does not. A publication running as a directory on a parent domain has nothing to implement here. Check your site in the tool’s search box before writing a ticket.

Who this is worth the work for

Both mechanisms reward an audience you already have. Nobody marks a site as preferred, or follows a Search profile, after one visit from a search result they barely registered. That makes this a retention feature wearing a discovery feature’s clothes, closest in character to the traffic source most sites ignore. It fits a publication with returning readers and a recognisable name, and it does very little for a site whose visitors arrive once. It is also a partial answer to zero-click search, in that a badge in Top Stories is still a link, which is more than the wider drift in how SERP features have evolved has tended to offer.