Google Search Console began emailing some site owners the number of people who have picked their site as a preferred source, according to Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land, both reporting on October 6. It is the first time publishers have seen their own selection count, and it arrives as an email rather than a report.
Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable published a screenshot of the message, with the figure masked. The email carries a “Preferred source selections” line and dates the data to October 5, 2026. Search Engine Land says only “some site owners” received it, so absence of the email does not mean absence of selections.
Preferred sources lets searchers choose the publications they want surfaced more often. The email describes the payoff in Google’s words: when readers select a site, “your content can appear more often across features like Top Stories, AI Overviews, and AI Mode.” That is a statement about visibility in specific features. It is not a claim that the selection lifts classic rankings, and the email does not say so.
Search Engine Land supplies the scale. Google says people have chosen more than 600,000 unique sources. In May 2026, Google put the figure at 200,000, which means the total has tripled in roughly five months, by Search Engine Land’s count. Google also says users who select a source are twice as likely to click, according to the same report. Both numbers are Google’s own claims, and neither comes with a published method or an independent check.
The email works as a sales pitch as much as a report. It urges publishers to install Google’s interactive JavaScript button, which takes two lines of HTML, and to replace any older static image button, because the newer version lets readers add a site in fewer steps. A publisher who has never promoted the feature would be asking readers to opt in for the first time.
Google also attached a survey. Its questions cover whether recipients knew about the feature before the email, how clear the explanation was, and how useful the count is. They also ask how often updates should come, whether the data should live in Search Console, and which metrics should be ranked first. Schwartz suggests completing it, since the answers will shape any future reporting.
Reaction from practitioners centered on the delivery. Glenn Gabe wrote that the data would be better inside Search Console. Nati Elimelech noted he could find no matching report there, and that the number appears only in the email. Kyle Sutton called the numbers useful for lining up a known click-through rate against selections.
That last point is the practical one. A selection count on its own tells a publisher how many readers opted in, not what those readers did afterward. The useful comparison is between that count and the traffic from Top Stories and Discover in Search Console, and between the count and returning-visitor behavior in analytics. Without a report that breaks out clicks from users who selected a source, any lift attributed to the feature rests on correlation.
Save each email as it arrives. Google has not committed to a cadence, so a dated series of counts is currently the only history a publisher can build. Pair each number with the same date range of Top Stories clicks, and record whether the preferred source button was live on your pages at that point.
Publishers who rely on news-feature traffic should treat the count as a leading indicator to track and the button as the cheapest lever to pull. The 2x click claim is worth testing on your own audience before it shapes any editorial or budget decision.
Based on reporting by Barry Schwartz for Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land, both published October 6, 2026.
