Last week Google changed how trusted sources show up in AI search, and it has a direct bearing on how medical device brands get seen. On 27 May 2026, Google brought its Preferred Sources feature into AI Overviews and AI Mode, alongside a wider "Highly Cited" badge and a new article carousel for developing topics. If you market a medical device, this is worth understanding now rather than later.
This is our first take on a new release, so we will keep this article updated as the feature develops and as we learn more about how it behaves in practice. If you want the updates as we publish them, subscribe using the button on this page and we will send them straight to you.
Here is what this article covers:
Google expanded three things at once: Preferred Sources, the "Highly Cited" badge, and a new article carousel for developing topics. The announcement came from Google's Search team on 27 May 2026, and the changes are rolling out in supported languages globally. Here is each part in turn.
Preferred Sources is a setting that lets a person choose the websites and publishers they want to see more often in Google Search. It first arrived in regular search results and the Top Stories carousel. With this update, the sites someone has chosen are now highlighted inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, the two AI generated answer formats inside Search, with a clear "Preferred" badge.
Two numbers from Google are worth holding on to. Google says people are roughly twice as likely to click an article from a preferred source than from a standard result. And it says people have already selected more than 345,000 unique sources, up from around 90,000 when the feature first expanded globally. In other words, this is a behaviour people are already adopting, not a feature waiting for an audience.
Anyone can add a source. You go to your Google Search settings, under source personalisation, and add a site by name or URL. Google says almost any website that regularly publishes fresh content is eligible. That last point matters for medical device brands, because it means a manufacturer's own content hub can be chosen as a preferred source, not just news publishers.
Google is adding a "Highly Cited" badge to more article links on the results page. The badge flags what Google calls primary reporting. By that, Google means the original source of a piece of information, rather than an article that summarises or repackages it. If you run a study and publish the results, you are the primary source. If another website then writes up your findings, that is the retelling. The badge is designed to point readers to the origin, and Google is also indicating when an article explicitly references a Highly Cited source.
For a medical device company, this rewards being the origin of information rather than the summariser of it. If you publish original clinical data, first hand analysis, or genuinely new thinking that others go on to cite, this badge is designed to surface you.
For some searches on developing or trending topics, Google may now show a carousel of recent articles alongside the AI generated summary, and it highlights your preferred sources within it. Google has also said a further carousel is coming that pulls firsthand perspectives from forums, online discussions, and social media.
The intent Google has described is to give people quick context from an AI answer while still pointing them towards full articles from trusted outlets. For marketers, the takeaway is that timely, original coverage of a moving topic has a new place to appear.
Not yet, and this is the part worth being precise about. Right now the "Preferred" badge appears when a site you have chosen happens to show up in an AI answer. It makes your chosen sources stand out, but it does not yet pull them into answers that they would not otherwise have reached.
Google has said it is working on using Preferred Sources as a ranking signal across its AI features, so that the sites a person has chosen appear more often. That is a stated direction of travel, not today's reality. We think the distinction is important, because the practical advice changes depending on which one is true, and we would rather you plan around what Google has actually shipped than around the headline.
What is true today is simpler and still significant. Trust, expressed as a deliberate opt in from a reader, now has a visible place inside AI answers. The clearer signal of where this is heading is that Google is building its AI search experience around sources people choose and content others cite.
Content, and the trust it builds, is becoming the currency of AI search. Most of the medtech teams we speak with are still working out what AI search means for them in the first place, so a new layer can feel like more noise. This one is worth the attention, because it rewards exactly the kind of marketing that serves a clinical audience well.
Think about who your buyer is. A clinician, a procurement lead, or a marketing director researching a category does not opt in to follow a brand that publishes thin, promotional pages. They opt in to follow a source that consistently helps them understand their field. The same content that earns a preferred source opt in is the content that earns citations from other publications, which is what the Highly Cited badge is built to surface.
There is a harder edge to this too. As AI answers increasingly sit above the traditional list of links, visibility is concentrating around chosen and cited sources. Get your content right and you become the brand a clinician follows and the source others reference. Get it wrong and you risk staying invisible in AI search, regardless of how much you spend elsewhere.
This is a familiar shift if you have been following the move towards answer engine optimisation. If you want the wider picture and the tools that help you measure your visibility, our guide to the best AEO tools for medical device companies is a good companion to this article.
You can act on this now without waiting for the ranking signal to arrive. The three moves below line up with what Google has shipped, and they hold their value whether or not Preferred Sources becomes a ranking signal later.
Make it easy for the people who already value your content to choose you. A reader can add a source from their Google Search settings under source personalisation, and Google supports a direct link that opens the add a source prompt for a specific site.
In practice that means two things. First, keep publishing the kind of useful, consistent content a clinician, healthcare professional, or procurement specialist would want to see more of, because the opt in only sticks if the content keeps earning it. Second, make the ask. A short prompt in your newsletter, on key pages, or in a post like the one that brought you here can point your existing audience to add you as a preferred source.
The Highly Cited badge and the developing topics carousel both favour original work. For a medical device brand, that means publishing the things only you can: real clinical data and outcomes you are permitted to share, first hand analysis of a procedure or a category, and genuinely new thinking rather than a rewrite of what is already out there.
This is where the discipline of medical device communications becomes an advantage rather than a constraint. Knowing exactly what you can and cannot claim, and where a claim has been approved, lets you publish original, specific, evidence backed content with confidence. Vague content does not get cited. Precise, substantiated content does.
None of this works if AI crawlers cannot read your content. Make sure your content is visible in the raw HTML rather than hidden behind JavaScript, that your robots file allows the AI crawlers you want, and that each page answers a clear question in a self contained way so it can be extracted and cited cleanly. These are the same foundations that help you appear in AI Overviews in the first place, before any badge or carousel comes into play.
This is a new release, and several things are still unsettled. We are watching three in particular, and we will update this article as they become clearer.
The first is whether, and how, Preferred Sources becomes a ranking signal. Google has said it is working on it, and that change would shift this from a labelling feature to something that actively decides who appears. The second is how the firsthand perspectives carousel behaves once it arrives, and whether forum and discussion content starts competing with brand content for space in AI answers. The third is how all of this plays out across the US, EU, and UK markets, since rollout and behaviour can differ by region.
If you want these updates as we publish them, subscribe using the button on this page, and add us as one of your preferred sources so our content is more likely to reach you in AI search. Adding a preferred source takes about a minute:
If you would rather skip the search, this link opens the add a source prompt for Podymos directly. As a new release, this is a topic we will keep returning to.
Preferred Sources rewards the brands that have earned trust through consistently useful content, and it puts that trust where more people will see it. Today it is a labelling and personalisation feature inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google's stated direction is to make it count for more. Either way, the work that pays off is the same: publish content your audience wants to follow and other publications want to cite.
If you would like help building a regulatory-compliant medical device content programme that earns opt ins and citations rather than just adding to the noise, our team works exclusively in medical device marketing and would be glad to talk it through.