Google is giving publishers a new way to ask readers to prioritise their reporting across Search as media organisations respond to changing traffic patterns caused by AI-powered search products. The term Google publishers AI search tool refers to the new Preferred Sources control.

The Daily Star reported that publishers can place a Google Preferred Sources button on their websites. A reader who uses the control can designate a publication as a source they want to see more often.

According to the report, a selected publisher is more likely to appear prominently in Google’s Top Stories feature. The publication can also receive a preferred-source label in AI Mode and AI Overviews, where Google presents generated answers alongside links.

Google’s own Search announcement describes a wider set of controls for website owners and says publishers can use Search Console tools and guidance to understand how AI features affect their sites. The official material does not turn the preference control into a guarantee of traffic or ranking.

The current change arrives as publishers continue to debate how AI summaries affect visits to the original websites that produced the information. Google told The Daily Star that readers were twice as likely to click through after marking a source as preferred, while also saying hundreds of thousands of sources had already been selected.

The button is a personalisation feature rather than an editorial endorsement of every article from a publication. Search placement can still change according to the query, freshness, relevance and other systems, so publishers and readers should treat the control as one signal within Google’s broader search experience.