Google Offers Publishers a Lifeline to Combat AI-Driven Traffic Losses

As the world grapples with the rapid growth of AI-powered search features, Google has announced a new initiative aimed at helping publishers negatively impacted by the change. The tech giant is now allowing readers to push a button on a publisher’s website to indicate it’s a ‘favorite source’ they’d like to see highlighted more often across Google Search, Discover, and Google News.

Source: techcrunch.com

Google is making this new, interactive ‘Preferred Sources’ button available to online publishers to embed on their own websites. This move follows the company’s rollout of Preferred Sources in May to Google’s AI experiences, including AI Mode and AI Overviews. The option was previously available in Top Stories.

The idea behind this feature is to make it easier for readers to find links from the sites they know and trust when they’re searching for content or interacting with Google’s AI to learn about a topic or read the latest news. By offering publishers this additional tool, Google is trying to assuage the damage that the rapid growth of AI-powered search features has had on traffic-dependent businesses.

To add a site as a favorite publisher, readers can visit Google’s source preferences page, then search for a publisher by name or website. Becoming a preferred source can drive more traffic to publishers’ websites, Google said. In earlier studies, it found that people are twice as likely to click through to a preferred source when available.

Alongside the new button, Google said that readers will soon be able to customize their Discover feed in Google’s app in their own words. To use this feature, readers will tap any three-dot menu in the feed and then tell Google what topics they’d like to see more or less of, using natural language commands. This helps Google refine the feed in real-time.

The search giant is not the only company turning to AI to offer feed-tuning tools powered by AI. In recent months, a number of top social media apps have launched user-controlled algorithms that allow people to fine-tune the content that is recommended to them.

In addition to personalizing the Discover feed, Google says Android users will be able to customize their audio daily briefings in the Google News app, as well. This feature is designed to provide users with a more tailored experience, allowing them to focus on the topics that interest them most.

By offering these additional tools, Google is taking a step in the right direction to address the concerns of publishers who have seen a decline in traffic as a result of AI-powered search features. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see how this feature is received by users and publishers alike.