Google Expands Preferred Sources Globally and Highlights News Subscriptions

Google has announced a global rollout of its Preferred Sources feature, allowing users to choose trusted publishers they want to see more often in Top Stories results. Alongside this expansion, Google introduced Spotlighting Subscriptions, which highlights content from a user’s paid news subscriptions within AI-powered experiences. The subscription spotlight feature will appear first in Gemini and later expand to other search experiences, including AI Overviews. These updates aim to give users greater control over news discovery while supporting publisher visibility in an increasingly AI-driven search environment. By surfacing trusted and subscribed sources more prominently, Google is attempting to balance personalization with publisher sustainability. The changes also reflect Google’s evolving relationship with news organizations as AI-generated summaries become more prominent across search surfaces.