Publisher Reach CTA Toolkit for Google Preferred Sources

Publisher Reach helps WordPress publishers add polished Google Preferred Sources invitations without hand-coding the integration or restyling every placement.

Choose Google’s official localized badge or create a branded CTA with editable text, a site logo, theme-aware colors, and responsive layouts. Publish it with the block, shortcode, automatic article placement, or an optional floating prompt.

The complete plugin is free. There is no Publisher Reach account, API key, paid plan, telemetry, or artificial feature limit.

Get your first button live

1. Install and activate Publisher Reach.
2. Open Settings > Publisher Reach and confirm the publication hostname.
3. Choose the Google flow and your official badge or custom CTA design.
4. Add the block to a post, or enable automatic placement.
5. Save and verify the button on the public page.

What you can publish

• Google’s official Preferred Sources badges in 17 supplied languages.
• Light, dark, automatic color-scheme, and Retina badge variants.
• Editable accessible label, heading, and supporting text.
• WordPress Site Logo, a Media Library image, or no logo.
• Theme-derived colors or seven custom color controls with contrast warnings.
• Minimal button, compact card, and callout presets with alignment, radius, shadow, and mobile-width controls.
• A Gutenberg block, safe shortcode, automatic before/after placement, and an optional floating prompt.
• Per-entry suppression and per-block design overrides.
• Multisite-safe, per-site settings and optional data removal on uninstall.

Choose how Google opens

• Selected design + Google flow (recommended): keeps the official badge or custom CTA you configured and progressively enhances it with Google’s flow.
• Google native button: Google renders and localizes the interface and controls its appearance.
• Direct link: uses a normal Google preferences link and makes no Google request before a reader clicks.

One integration mode applies across the document. The selected-design and native modes request Google’s library when the first Publisher Reach surface renders. Direct-link mode is the privacy-first choice when no pre-click Google request is wanted. See External Services before enabling a mode.

Block and shortcode

Add the Preferred Source Button block, or use:

[publisher_reach]

Optional attributes are label, heading, body, preset, align, theme, lang, design, badge_theme, icon, and mobile_full. They inherit the global settings unless overridden. URLs, HTML, CSS, and executable code are rejected.

Example:

[publisher_reach heading="Make us a preferred source" body="See more from our newsroom in Google Search." align="center" design="google_badge" badge_theme="auto" preset="compact"]

Important boundaries

Publisher Reach does not register or approve a site or confirm that a reader completed Google’s flow. It cannot guarantee selection, visibility, placement, traffic, or rankings. Google controls eligibility and the Preferred Sources service. Only domains and subdomains are eligible; a subdirectory such as example.com/news is not a separate source.

Publisher Reach is independent and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Google. Google marks belong to Google LLC.

Privacy

Publisher Reach has no telemetry, advertising, or author connection. Settings stay in WordPress. The optional prompt stores only a session flag or local timestamp in the visitor’s browser; it is not analytics. See PRIVACY.txt, THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt, and External Services below.

External Services

Publisher Reach can connect visitors to Google’s Preferred Sources service. Google controls that service, including its availability, eligibility decisions, interface, completion state, and results.

In the selected-design and native modes, Publisher Reach requests Google’s Preferred Sources library from:

https://news.google.com/swg/js/v1/publisher.js

It is requested only after the first non-direct-link Publisher Reach surface renders. Google may process ordinary request data such as IP address, browser, referrer, and publication domain under its policies.

In direct-link mode, Publisher Reach creates a local link in this form:

https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=example.com

Google is contacted only after the visitor follows that link.

Service documentation: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/preferred-sources

Google Terms of Service: https://policies.google.com/terms

Google Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Publisher Reach does not send telemetry, site configuration, or visitor analytics to the plugin authors.

Development

Human-readable source is under src/. Run npm ci && npm run build with a supported Node.js version to reproduce generated assets from scripts/build-assets.mjs and package-lock.json. Google’s unmodified Preferred Sources badge images and their source/licence record are under resources/; no third-party runtime code, font, or copied Google JavaScript is bundled.