The last year has brought some of the biggest changes to Google’s search results pages that I have ever seen in my near-decade of experience working in digital media. And not all of those changes are welcome.
Thankfully, there’s now a way to customize what you see in search — and to prioritize seeing The Verge. You can do this by selecting The Verge as a preferred source in Google. This tells Google that you want to see us in the “Top stories” carousel on its search results page whenever our coverage is relevant to your search.
The easiest way to do this is to click this link and check the box that says The Verge, and you’ll be set.
You can also follow The Verge in Discover, the feed that lives on the homescreen of the Google app, by tapping “Follow” when you see us appear in your feed. In a similar vein, Google will then prioritize showing our content in your Discover feed.
Why are we asking you to do this? The Google search landscape is not at all what it once was. Google is showing fewer standard blue links and more YouTube videos, social posts, forum pages, sponsored results, and, of course, AI Overviews — and these are all subject to change every time Google’s algorithms reevaluate the web.
When you do a search, you may indeed want to watch a video, poke around on discussion forums, or get a quick answer from AI, but sometimes you do just want to click on a link. Google itself admitted that it isn’t done experimenting with new features, and its algorithms will continue to shake up even blue links in search results. It remains to be seen how the company will keep serving its users’ needs in these ways while maintaining a healthy internet ecosystem.
These customization features, though, are a win. In a world where users have so little control over search results, Google allowing you to personalize your sources on its two major surfaces is an unexpected, but welcome, move. Google has also long stressed to SEO experts the importance of building a trustworthy, authoritative brand to see success in search. Providing an option for readers to follow individual brands is a surprisingly direct application of that.
We hope you choose to add us as a preferred source and follow us in Discover. Give us a shout if you do — we’ll be very grateful.
