Google is expanding its Preferred Sources tool to users around the world, months after first introducing the feature in the United States and India.
Okay News reports that the global rollout begins this week for English-language users, with support for other languages expected early next year.
Preferred Sources allows people to star specific news outlets within the Top Stories section of Google Search. Once selected, Google adjusts the user’s results to show more stories from the starred publishers, giving readers greater control over the sources they see.
The feature was tested in beta earlier this year and officially launched in two markets in August. According to Robby Stein, Google Search’s Vice President of Product, user adoption has been broad.
“We’re now launching this feature globally: in the coming days, it will be available for English-language users worldwide, and we’ll roll it out to all supported languages early next year,” Stein said.
According to Stein, “People have selected a wide range of preferred sources — nearly 90,000 unique sources, from local blogs to global news outlets.”
Google also noted that users who select preferred sources end up clicking to those sites twice as often as they did before enabling the feature.
To activate Preferred Sources, users tap the star icon located next to the Top Stories header in Google Search.
Once a publication is starred, Google begins surfacing more timely updates from that outlet when relevant to the user’s query.
Google said the goal is to strengthen reader autonomy while improving the usefulness of breaking-news results by reflecting individual preferences.
