Add Ithildin as a preferred source in Google.

Every page on ithildin.ch now carries Google's preferred-source button — in the footer, and directly under the byline on each News item. One click tells Google that when it shows a news-shaped result, you want to see ours. The short link ithildin.ch/prefer does the same thing without JavaScript, which is what we will use in emails and profiles.

Google keys this setting to a single domain: "Only domain-level and subdomain-level sites are eligible to appear in the source preferences tool" (Search Central). Ithildin has been reachable at two hosts — ithildin.ch and ithildin.icu — serving the same deployment, while every canonical link, sitemap URL and social card on both already said ithildin.ch. As of this release ithildin.icu and www.ithildin.icu redirect permanently to ithildin.ch. One address, one source, nothing split between them.

The feature itself is Google's, not ours. Preferred sources became generally available to users in the United States and India in August 2025, rolled out globally in all supported languages in April 2026, and got the embeddable one-click button — the one on this page — in August 2026. Google's documentation now scopes it to Top Stories and to AI Mode and AI Overviews, "in all languages and locales where those features are available".

What it does is narrower than the headlines it attracted, and worth stating plainly. Google's documentation describes a per-reader effect: when someone selects a site, "your content is more likely to appear in 'Top Stories', highlighted with a 'preferred' badge", and the same badge can mark it in AI Mode and AI Overviews — for that reader. Google has never described it as a ranking input, and the number of people who select a site is not published anywhere, not even in Search Console. The one performance figure Google has released is that readers are about twice as likely to click through to a source they have chosen. Nothing about it makes a page more accurate, and nothing about it should replace reading the sources on it.

There is one honest caveat. Whether a domain is offered in Google's tool at all is Google's automated call, and the criterion Google publishes is cadence: "Sources that aren't updated regularly may not be available" (Google Search Help). A site that publishes nothing dated will not be listed, and a button on such a site sends its readers to an empty result. That is the reason this News section exists with real dates, a feed, a news sitemap and editorial standards stating who writes it and how corrections are handled — not the other way round. If the button on this page does not yet find us, that is Google's answer today, and the fix is more dated, sourced writing, which we are doing anyway.

If Ithildin's reporting on Swiss sovereign software is useful to you, the button in the footer of this page takes about a second. If you would rather not hand Google a preference, the RSS feed is right there and answers to nobody.