Google has also activated Preferred Sources in Italy, a new function integrated into Search that allows us to indicate which information sites we want to see most often among the results dedicated to news. The new feature partially changes the way we interact with Google News and the “Top news” section.
Among these you can obviously also include us at Geopop, simply by clicking on this link. But let’s see in more detail how to achieve this.
Do you know that box that appears when we search for current affairs and which collects articles automatically selected by Google’s algorithms? That’s exactly what we’re referring to. With this option we can report the newspapers and sources that we consider most reliable (or closest to our interests), so as to find them more frequently in the results.
How Google Favorite Sources work and what’s changing
The Preferred Sources function does not eliminate other information sources and does not transform the search into a completely personalized environment: Google will still continue to show us content from different publishers, organizing it based on criteria such as relevance, authoritativeness of the publisher and relevance to the topic covered. Google has in fact specified:
Once you select sources, they will appear more frequently in the Top Stories section or in the dedicated “From your sources” section on the search results page. You will also continue to view content from other sites and can manage your preferences at any time.
The stated goal is to offer more control to users in a digital ecosystem increasingly crowded with news, videos, articles and insights. According to data released by Google, users tend to click much more often on the sites they have added to their preferences. For this reason, the new function seeks to build a more orderly and consistent information experience with our reading habits, while leaving us the possibility of changing preferences at any time.
The function is part of the Google News ecosystem, the service with which Google organizes and displays journalistic content from a large number of publishers. When we carry out a search linked to a news story, an international event or a much-discussed topic, the platform automatically activates sections dedicated to news. The most visible is “Top news” where articles considered relevant by the algorithms are collected.
How to follow and set Geopop as a favorite
Enabling the feature is pretty simple. If you want to include Geopop among your favorite sources, for example, you must follow these three simple steps:
- Go to the Source Preferences page.
- Type “Geopop.it” in the Search by name or website text field.
- Place a check mark in the appropriate box: in this LINK you will find it already pre-filled.
Alternatively, after searching for current news on Google, click on the star symbol located in the Main news section and, in the Choose your favorite sources box, repeat the steps I have already described above.
As you can see, regardless of which of the two procedures you followed, our online magazine will appear in the Your sources section, which is located at the bottom of the Source preferences page or at the bottom of the Choose your favorite sources box. From now on, when you search for a topic that affects «Sciences in everyday life», it will be much more likely that you will be able to intercept one of our articles.
