Every few years, the world of online journalism changes. Ten years ago everyone pivoted to video; now it’s all changing again, as Google uses (questionable) AI summaries to keep people on its site rather than sending them out to outlets (like us) which actually know what they’re talking about.
The good news is, you can set Jalopnik as a “preferred source” in Google, and it’s a matter of clicking a couple of buttons in your search results. Google rolled out Preferred Sources last year, in the interest of letting users pick which sites they see the most from. Follow a few simple steps, and you should see a lot more of our articles.
Adding a preferred source is simple
The easy way to add us as a preferred source is to click this link, then tick the check box that pop up next to Jalopnik. The slightly longer way is to search Google for pretty much any topic — cars, Tesla, the 2024 Kia Sorento — until you see a Top Stories section in your results. Click the icon next to that section’s header (it’s the stack-of-two-cards image shown in the screenshot above) and search for Jalopnik in the popup that appears. Tick the check box there, and it’ll tell Google that you want to see more of our stories in your search results.
Despite the pessimism online and off, this is not some apocalyptic era for Jalopnik or for journalism. It’s a paradigm shift, sure, but our industry has weathered those time after time — newspapers, magazines, webrings, newsletters, video, and now search. We’re not planning on going anywhere, so don’t worry. Adding us as a preferred source certainly helps us stick around, though.
