# I Built a Joomla Plugin for a Google Preferred Sources ![I Built a Joomla Plugin for a Google Preferred Sources](https://cdn.richeyweb.com/images/articles/plg_system_googlepreferred/system-google-preferred.webp) Google has been quietly handing publishers something they haven't had in years: a lever they can actually pull. So I built a [Joomla plugin](/blog/development/canonical-http-headers-for-rss-feeds "Canonical HTTP Headers for RSS Feeds") that pulls the Google Preferred Sources lever: System - Google Preferred The feature is called Preferred Sources. It lets users mark websites they trust, and Google responds by prioritizing that content in their Top Stories feed and — as of May 27, 2026 — inside [AI Overviews](/blog/hosting/search-engine-optimization-insights-from-google-on-ai-and-seo-experts "Search Engine Optimization: Google on AI and SEO Experts") and AI Mode as well. [Google's own data](https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/original-high-quality-content-search/ "New ways to find your favorite sources and original content in AI Search") says users who mark a site as a preferred source are twice as likely to click through to it. Over 345,000 unique sites have already been selected by users worldwide. For publishers navigating a sustained period of traffic pressure driven by AI Overviews and algorithmic volatility, that's not a minor footnote. [Search Engine Journal called it](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-rolls-out-preferred-sources-for-top-stories-in-search/553529/ "Google Rolls Out ‘Preferred Sources’ For Top Stories In Search") "a direct way to encourage loyal readers to see more of your coverage in Search." [PPC Land noted](https://ppc.land/google-updates-preferred-sources-guide-doubling-publisher-click-through-rates/ "Google updates preferred sources guide, doubling publisher click-through rates") that it "represents one of the few official levers Google has made available that puts audience development partially back in the hands of editorial teams rather than ranking systems." The feature is live. It works. And Google even [publishes resources for publishers](https://search.google.com/search-console/about) that want to promote it to their audience. The only missing piece for Joomla sites was a way to surface the call-to-action without dropping a custom HTML module on every page and hand-coding the link. That's the gap I built for. ## What the Plugin Actually Does System - Google Preferred is a Joomla 5 [system plugin](/blog/development/my-software-powers-joomlas-volunteer-portal "My Software Powers Joomla’s Volunteer Portal") that adds a Bootstrap toast notification to your site's front end. The toast appears after a configurable delay, tells the visitor they can add your site as a Google Preferred Source, and links them directly to the right Google preferences page for your domain. That's it. No accounts, no server-side storage, no external dependencies. The visitor either clicks it or closes it. If they close it, a cookie remembers that for however many days you configure — 30 by default — so it doesn't pester people. ## A Few Things Worth Noting About the Build The architecture follows Joomla's recommended patterns for system plugins: `SubscriberInterface`, `onBeforeCompileHead`, `WebAssetManager` for the JavaScript, `addScriptOptions` to pass PHP configuration values to the frontend. Nothing unusual there. The more interesting decision was how to inject the toast HTML. Rather than building the DOM in JavaScript, the plugin renders the toast as a `