Website discovery references

Google Search lets readers mark a site as a preferred source. Once they do, Google says your content is more likely to surface in Top Stories and can carry a “preferred” badge in AI Mode and AI Overviews for that reader. The button prompts a reader to select a source; it is separate from the archived file proposal.

Live example

This is the real button, rendered by Google's script on this page:

Two ways to implement it

<script async
  src="https://news.google.com/swg/js/v1/publisher.js"></script>

<div google-add-preferred-source-btn></div>

<!-- optional -->
<div google-add-preferred-source-btn
     data-theme="dark"
     data-lang="en"></div>

<a href="https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=example.com">
  Add as a preferred source
</a>

Source: Google Search Central — preferred sources

Google says Organization structured data can help it understand an organisation's details and distinguish similarly named organisations. Some properties can influence the logo or knowledge panel details shown in Google Search.

Google recommends placing it on your home page or a single page describing the organisation — an about page — rather than on every page. No property is strictly required; add the ones that are true.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "[Your Brand Name]",
  "legalName": "[Your Registered Business Name]",
  "alternateName": "[Accepted short form]",
  "url": "https://[www.example.com]",
  "logo": "https://[www.example.com]/logo.png",
  "description": "[Factual summary consistent with the visible page]",
  "foundingDate": "[YYYY-MM-DD]",
  "vatID": "[VAT number]",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "[Street]",
    "addressLocality": "[City]",
    "postalCode": "[Postcode]",
    "addressCountry": "[GB]"
  },
  "contactPoint": {
    "@type": "ContactPoint",
    "email": "[hello@example.com]",
    "contactType": "customer support"
  },
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.linkedin.com/company/[handle]",
    "https://github.com/[handle]"
  ]
}

Source: Google Search Central — Organization structured data · Validate with the Rich Results Test

IndexNow notifies participating search engines when URLs are added, changed or removed. Participating engines share submitted URLs, but each decides whether and when to crawl and index them. A notification does not ensure that an AI answer will use the updated information.

Setup

1. Generate a key: 8 to 128 characters, letters, numbers and dashes only.
2. Host it as a UTF-8 text file at your root — example.com/{key}.txt — containing the key and nothing else. This proves ownership.
3. Ping on publish or update.

# one URL
curl "https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=https://example.com/page&key=YOUR_KEY"

# many URLs — up to 10,000 per request
curl -X POST https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "host": "example.com",
    "key": "YOUR_KEY",
    "urlList": [
      "https://example.com/llms.txt",
      "https://example.com/about"
    ]
  }'

A 200 confirms a successful submission, not indexing. Submit meaningful changes and check the search engine's indexing status separately.

Source: IndexNow documentation · Submission and indexing FAQ

These editorial checks concern the accuracy of public information. They do not depend on the archived file suite.