Google launched a button letting readers mark outlets as preferred sources across Search, Discover, and News, a direct response to publisher revenue losses from AI-generated answers.
TechCrunch reports the new feature aims to boost visibility for publishers as AI Overviews and chatbots increasingly answer queries without sending clicks to source sites. Readers can now flag specific outlets to appear more often in their results.
The move follows sustained pressure from publishers who say AI search summaries have gutted referral traffic that once funded their newsrooms.
This is Google acknowledging, implicitly, that its own AI products are cannibalizing the open web it depends on for training data and ad inventory. Publishers should treat this as a partial fix, not a business model, and keep pushing for direct compensation or licensing deals.
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