What you need to know
- Google is adding Preferred Sources labels to AI Overviews and AI Mode for more trusted answers.
- AI Overviews will now surface an article carousel more prominently in Search.
- Google's "Highly Cited" labels are expanding to highlight original reporting across Search results.
Google is making AI Overviews and Search more trustworthy by adding Preferred Sources support and surfacing more original reporting directly inside AI-generated results.
AI Mode in Google Search has now become a major part of Google's core experience. The company even highlighted during its recent earnings call that AI-powered Search has been driving growth, and Google also gave Search a major overhaul at I/O earlier this month. Now the company is announcing another major change aimed at improving trust and credibility in AI-generated answers.
I think it'd have been much better if Google directly surfaced the Preferred label inside the AI Overview itself. Right now, it looks like the labels only appear when users hover over the sources section or look at the link panel on the right side. Still, it's at least a step in the right direction.
Google says it is bringing its Preferred Sources feature directly into AI Overviews and AI Mode. Preferred Sources already exists in regular Google Search, allowing users to select websites and publishers they trust the most.
Now, those same publishers will appear more prominently inside AI-generated answers with a Preferred label attached to them. Google says users who interact with Preferred Sources are twice as likely to click them compared to normal search links.
And on that note, if you haven't already added us as a Preferred Source on Google, maybe consider doing that.
The bigger update here, though, is how Google is now surfacing actual articles more prominently beneath AI Overviews. For example, when you search for a topic or breaking news, Google will now display a much more visible carousel of original reporting underneath the AI-generated summary, similar to how Top Stories currently appear in regular Search.
Google is also expanding its "Highly Cited" labels across Search. These labels are meant to highlight original reporting that gets frequently referenced by other outlets, helping users identify more authoritative sources.
This all comes just days after former Eric Schmidt was loudly booed when talking about AI during a graduation speech. It's pretty clear Google isn't slowing down its AI push anytime soon. If anything, the company is doubling down on it.
But, at the very least, it does seem like Google is finally trying to preserve and surface original publisher content more visibly alongside AI-generated answers.
