Back in January, I had this theory.
I said Google Search was slowly turning into YouTube. Search results would start to work like your subscriptions.
Think about how YouTube works. You subscribe to a channel, and that channel shows up first.
My thought was that Google would start doing the same thing with websites.
This week, Google’s Search Console team started emailing some site owners a new number: how many people picked their site as a “Preferred Source.”
That is a subscriber count. For a website. From Google.
So, let’s take a look how my theory is pulling together.
First, what is a Preferred Source?
It’s a setting where you tell Google which sites you want to see more of.
Pick a site, and its stories show up more often in Top Stories. In Google’s AI answers, they get a “preferred” badge.
You can pick sites in your Google settings, or by tapping the star next to Top Stories.
Think of it like a subscribe button for the open web.
My prediction: search results will start to like subscriptions
Grade: Called it.
Last December, people had picked about 90,000 sites. By August, Google said more than 600,000.
Google also says people are twice as likely to click through to a Preferred Source.
It started as a small test in the U.S. and India in August 2025. Now it works in every language Google Search supports, and it shows up inside Google’s AI answers too.
Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, has even described a related feature where the sites you subscribe to get treated as preferred sources.
In August, Google handed site owners a button to put on their own pages. That is a subscribe button very similar to what you would see on YouTube.
My big question: who is going to track this?
Grade: Google is.
In January I asked what tools would come out to track your total source preferences.
Turns out, Google itself. The email comes with a survey asking site owners if they want this number inside Search Console.
Google has been sitting on this for a while. Back in August 2025, someone asked Rajan Patel, a VP of engineering for Google Search, for exactly this number. His reply: “We’re looking into this.”
A little over a year later, here it is. One email Barry Schwartz shared showed 4,345 selections for a single site.
Why does that matter? Because once there’s a number, people start chasing it.
Marketers will put it in reports. Agencies will sell it. It becomes a thing you grow, like email subscribers or followers.
My prediction: Google.com becomes a feed
Grade: Not yet.
Google tested a news feed on its desktop homepage. As of September, it’s gone again. Still a search box and a lot of white space.
On phones, it’s a different story. The Google app already opens to a feed, and Google is letting people tune it just by typing what they want to see.
I’ll take the L on this one. For now.
My bet: it becomes a ranking signal
Grade: Too early.
I bet this would turn into a new signal, like a backlink.
Google’s John Mueller says Preferred Sources works alongside the ranking systems and doesn’t override them. So for now, your picks only change what you see.
I still think it’s heading that way. Ask me again in nine months.
My overall scorecard
I will take a solid 2/4, but I still suspect in the 2-3 years that this scorecard will be fully filled up.
What this means for your business
If you publish anything regularly, like a blog, a newsletter, or local news, you can now collect subscribers on Google.
Here’s why you and I should care. A lot of search is turning into AI answers.
This is one of the few spots where your customers decide what shows up, not an algorithm.
Check that your site shows up at google.com/preferences/source.
Add Google’s button to your site. It’s two lines of code.
Ask. In your emails, your social posts, and at the end of every article.
No developer? Google also gives you a plain link you can drop into emails and social posts.
One thing to be aware of is Google only lists whole sites and subdomains. A folder like yoursite.com/blog doesn’t get its own entry.
Another is that this works especially well on news-style searches and in Google’s AI answers, so it rewards people who publish fresh stuff.
If you help market a business and havn’t heard of this yet, you are in the majority. That’s why I see this as a big opportunity to get ahead in.
What are your thoughts?
Have you picked any Preferred Sources yet?
Did you get the email from Google? What was your number?
And be sure to crush that like button & add my newsletter as a preferred source on Google.
-Aaron
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