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Google Will Now Let You Pick Your Top Sources For Search Results (techcrunch.com) 36

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Google is rolling out a new feature called "Preferred Sources" in the U.S. and India, which allows users to select their preferred choice of news sites and blogs to be shown in the Top Stories section of Google's search results. From a report: Enabling this feature means you will see more content from the sites you like, the company says. When users search for a particular topic, they will see a "star" icon next to the Top Stories section. They can tap on that icon and start adding sources by searching for them. Once you select the sources, you can refresh the results to see more content from your selected sources. Google said that for some queries, users will also see a separate "From your sources" section below the Top Stories section.

Google Will Now Let You Pick Your Top Sources For Search Results More | Reply

Google Will Now Let You Pick Your Top Sources For Search Results

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  • Too Sticky to be legal (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So you're telling me that after I set my preferences there's no way for an alternative to become my new preference unless I manually do it?

    So why are you enforcing these echo chambers, google?

    • A) That's what people seem to want.
      and B) It's one more point of data they can collect about you. $user prefers site A, B, C, D, so advertise things associated with users of sites A, B, C, D.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        What people really want is a way to filter low quality sites like Quora and Pinterest. I don't need Facebook results either.

        • What people really want is a way to filter low quality sites like Quora and Pinterest. I don't need Facebook results either.

          A blacklist for search would be absolutely amazing, which is why they will never, ever provide one. The tech companies are absolutely convinced that if the users want it, they can not provide it. If the users hate the idea, it must be implemented immediately!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by taustin ( 171655 )

          For what it's worth, you can filter those out now by putting the domain behind a minus sign:

          "Stupid cat photos -pinterest"

          There's probably a plugin for your favorite browser that will automatically append a list at the end of any search.

        • This is really what google needs. A box in your settings where you can enter a list of domains to NEVER return results from. Pinterest has made an absolute mess of google image searches.

        • Yeah I do this with kagi and it improves things a lot.

    • Would you prefer they choose your preferred sources for you?

      The actual insidious part about this is tying those preferences to your profile which they will definitely use to commoditize their user base even more.

    • Meh, all social media (and remember: far more people get their news from social media than Google News) is already a giant echo chamber.

      I see this less as "Google betraying mankind" and more as "Google begrudgingly doing what every other site already does".

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      So why are you enforcing these echo chambers, google?

      Google is an advertising company first, last, and always. You're the product they're selling. Advertisers don't give a damn what you're looking for, only what they want to show you. And they only want to pay for people who might be potential customers to see their ads, and that is why the science of demographics exists. Group people by measurable characteristics that are relevant to how they spend money.

      Google isn't doing this to benefit you, the eyeballs they're selling to advertisers. They're doing this b

  • There just stealing Kagi's (https://kagi.com) weighted search system.

    • Do you pay for Kagi search?

      • Yep it's well worth the $5 a month for the starter sub (300 searches + AI assistant a month). I use it for real searches and then fall back to DDG for the simple stuff.

        Kagi is not a search algorithm it's a metasearch aggregate engine which uses 6-8 different search engines for every search - and it's add free.

  • ... and set us as your default source in Google.

  • I would LOVE to be able to pick my preferred news outlets and not get fed content from Murdoch and the other crappy media outlets that plague this country.

  • I keep telling it to "stop showing stories like this"
    I don't care how some celebrity who was in a few movies in the 90's is unrecognizable today
    or other such clickbait.
    Apparently you can't get rid of clickbait stories in general, because money.

  • My preferred source is: not google.
    DuckDuckGo

  • Most news sources linked by Google News are somewhat reasonable. But if I can't read the story without an account, I don't want to see it in the search results. Period. I'm not going to make that account just to read that article.

    • That will never happen. Google is 100% getting kick backs from these paywalled sites for every signup that comes thought Google news. Otherwise how have they gotten access to scrape the news article to include in the news feed to begin with? Likely these paywalled sites would raise hell if google just got their own account for scraping without the paywalled site's blessing.

      • You are certainly right about payola.

        As for how Google gets access, that's a dirty little secret, but not exactly due to money changing hands. Those sites are built so that when a crawler pays a visit, the site coughs up the entire content to the crawler, minus the ads. When a human visits the site with a regular web browser, you get hit with the ads and the paywall.

        That's why these sites are so up in arms about AI crawlers--because they are crawlers, they get the entire payload, the articles in full, in ra

    • That's one of my problems with Apple News. I pay for it. I am generally pretty happy with it.

      Sometimes it includes stories with links to sources that require a login. I'd pay more for Apple News if those kinds of results were not included.

      • I'm glad you like Apple News. I don't pay for my news, and I'm generally pretty happy with it. I go to NPR.org, CNN.com, my local paper's website. When I'm curious about what the Trump world is thinking, I'll visit FoxNews.com just to see what they're saying. No need to pay for news.

        • I'm not paying for news. I'm paying for convenience.

          Apple News is like Google News. It links to stuff wherever it is, including NPR, CNN and wherever else. It just keeps me from having to go to all of those sites individually.

  • This will amplify the echo-chamber effect by orders of magnitude.
    People will not even have to scroll past the NYT results, and only see Fox News search results.

    The Enshitification of society continues unabated.

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