Google Search, Discover and News: New options for personalization

Google is expanding personalization for its search, Discover feed and News. A new interactive button lets users mark their favorite publishers directly. As a result, these media appear significantly more often in the top results.

More control for users

Google is expanding personalization options for its search engine, Discover feed and News app. In the future, users will be able to control much more precisely which content and media they prefer to see. The company’s goal is to adapt the display of articles and news updates more closely to the individual preferences of the readership. This should noticeably increase the relevance of the results displayed and strengthen loyalty to your own services.

A central innovation is the interactive button for preferred sources. Website operators embed the element directly on their pages. If visitors click on it, the respective medium is marked as favorite. From now on, the search engine will increasingly take the portal into account in the top stories and in the AI ​​summaries. After clicking, users stay directly on the original page. This doesn’t interrupt the flow of reading and ensures a seamless experience. Like the company in one Blog post writes, users have already added over 600,000 unique sources to their favorite profile. For online publishers, the tool offers the advantage of mitigating the decline in visitor numbers caused by artificial intelligence – and we would also be very happy if you could favor us. This is how personalizing the Discover feed works

Studies by the group show that preferred sources are clicked on twice as often when they appear in search results. This gives publishers an opportunity to reach their loyal readership in a more targeted manner.

Customize Discover feed using AI

In addition, the technology group is revising the control of the Discover feed in the in-house app. In the coming days, a new interface for entering text commands will open via the three-dot menu. There, users can describe in natural language which subject areas they would like to see more or less frequently. The software then adjusts the displayed items in real time. The system permanently saves the preferences for future visits. There is also a functional adjustment for people who prefer to listen to the news. In the Google News app for the Android operating system, daily audio summaries can now be filtered by specific topics. According to the developers, the generated language updates always cite the original source.

They also link to the full text so that listeners can delve deeper into the subject and read the original article if necessary. These updates reflect the general trend toward more algorithmic and user-defined information flows on the Internet. Search engines and news aggregators are increasingly relying on machine learning to filter out the wealth of content that best meets individual information needs.