Your email subscribers and what they see in their inboxes may now be a key factor in how your business shows up in AI Search.
Yes, that does sound creepy, but it’s now our interconnected, AI world reality.
Most business owners don’t see a correlation between email marketing and AI search.
Honestly, I didn’t realize there was one until I did the research for last week’s Email Marketing Ecosystem newsletter issue and it came up as one of the factors in why email marketing is better than social media.
That’s when I decided I wanted to dig deeper into this idea to see if it truly has legs. It does. Two of them, in fact.
“Leg” #1: Google’s Preferred Sources
Google has apparently had Preferred Sources for a while now but on May 27th, 2026, they started making it more of a “thing” by writing a blog post and making it more accessible to everyone.
Preferred Sources is a way for the user (that’s all of us) to pick sites they want to see/hear from more often. This lets Google know our preferences, which means when one of those sites shows up in an AI Overview, AI Mode response or Top Stories, it carries a “Preferred” badge.
Why this is a big deal
Google itself says people are roughly twice as likely to click through to a source with a “Preferred” badge. And they say users have already selected more than 345,000 unique sources. So this isn’t a random thing Google threw out there as an option. People are actually using it.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean that if you have a bunch of people mark your website as a preferred source, you’ll suddenly soar to the top of AI Search visibility.
But if your site is sourced in an AI search query, it will come up with a Preferred badge, which may make people more likely to click on your cited link.
It’s the same inclination we all have to follow recommendations from a friend over random searches on the internet or buy a product after reading reviews.
How to Use This for Your Business
If you are regularly creating content and adding it to your website, you qualify to become a preferred source. Google even has an easy-to-follow guide to set it up.
The basics are to add a button to your website with the URL to your deeplink, which takes people directly to the source preferences tool and automatically adds your website to the search box.
That link would look like this:
So for my link it would be https://google.com/preferences/source?q=tanyabrodycopywriter.com
Yes, if you click on that link, it will take you to the Google Preferred Source tool, where you can choose my site as a preferred source by clicking the box next to my website’s name.
Then, ask your email subscribers, followers, friends, neighbors, random strangers on the internet, or whoever else you so choose, to mark your website as a preferred source.
Since we’re talking about it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d click on that link and mark my website as a preferred source. Thanks in advance. More on this later.
“Leg” #2: Google Personal Intelligence
Google’s AI Mode now actively reads users’ connected Gmail when answering queries.
This is through a feature called Personal Intelligence, which you have to turn on in your Google Account. Right now this is automatically off for privacy reasons.
However, for those who have turned on the Personal Intelligence feature, Google’s AI Mode can connect to personal context through apps like Gmail and Photos, to make searches more tailored to that person’s preference.
IPullRank created a small, controlled experiment to see whether personal context affected which brand Google’s AI Mode recommends.
Spoiler alert: It did.
Their experiment consisted of a blank control account, a blank account connected to Personal Intelligence, and the personal (read; mature and full of data) account of Garrett Sussmann, Marketing Director of IPullRank and leader of this experiment. They ran it over 17 days and 1,922 AI Mode responses. But within the framework of their experiment, the results are significant.
The image above and the following paragraphs are from the article they wrote about the experiment.
“…We seeded brand signals into Gmail and Photos, ran recommendation prompts across eight product and service categories, and measured whether those brands appeared more often in AI Mode.
“Across 1,922 AI Mode responses, seeded brands in the Personal Intelligence-connected account saw statistically significant visibility lift compared with the control account. Gmail-based signals were far stronger than Photos. The brands did not just appear more often. They moved into more prominent recommendation positions.
“This has major implications for AI search measurement. Brand visibility is starting to move beyond the public web and into the user’s personal context.”
It’s a really interesting article, I recommend reading it when you have time.
The TL:DR of it all is, we’re moving from “What does AI recommend” meaning how can brands make themselves more prominent to the AI Search engines and even game the system, to “What is most relevant for this user with their own history, asking this specific question”.
Again, creepy, but really interesting and useful for businesses of all sizes.
Especially those of us who use email marketing to spread the word about who we are, who we serve, and what we offer. You will note that I bolded the sentence about Gmail signals being stronger than Photos. (My formatting, not theirs.) That also includes signals from emails that weren’t opened but were in the Gmail inbox.
This means the more consistent we are in showing up in our subscribers’ inboxes, the more we may show up in their searches as well.
This is another step towards the idea that you don’t need an email list with thousands upon thousands of contacts to get traction.
Instead, you need a highly engaged list, that can be significantly smaller, to get the same amount of traction, and can make as much or more impact, and money, in the long term.
Obviously, all of this will change next month, or week, or whenever Google launches another update. But I suspect it is something they will continue to pursue and refine, as it’s to their advantage, as well as ours.
I’m Running an Experiment of My Own on Email Marketing and AI Search
Before I tell you about this experiment, I want to say that I am a single human being and small business owner, running her own business by herself. I do not have the resources or knowledge of a major AEO/SEO platform and its employees.
This will be a very basic experiment. My conclusions will be entirely based on what is easily observable, not on any in-depth tracking.
Also, because this is an experiment regarding AI, I did the logical thing when turning to an expert. I asked the robots, specifically Claude, to help me design it.
The Premise:
To find out whether asking your subscribers to mark you as a Preferred Source actually changes whether AI search engines surface your business.
Length: 4 weeks
Tracking:
- Citation changes in AI Search
- Subscriber-reported visibility
- Position change
Step 1: The Baseline – Where Am I In AI Search Right Now?
To start this experiment, Claude recommended that I run 5 search queries in incognito mode across multiple AI platforms.
It suggested the following questions that my ideal client avatar (ICA) would ask in a search:
- “Best email marketing consultant for conscious businesses”
- “How to write ethical email marketing”
- “Email marketing strategist for mission-driven businesses”
- “How to re-engage a cold email list”
- “Why email marketing matters for small businesses”
I added in a sixth query based on the most common question I get from my ICA: “How do I figure out what to say in my nurture emails?”
I ran each query in an incognito window (Chrome) in these 4 AI Search platforms
- Google (standard search with AI Overview)
- ChatGPT (free version)
- Perplexity (free version)
- Claude (free version)
In the Google searches, Claude specifically asked me to “note whether an AI Overview appears, and what sources it cites.”
I tracked all of this in a spreadsheet, as per Claude’s recommendation.
Here are my results:
I was rather pleased to see that I showed up 3 times in Google’s AI Overview, twice via LinkedIn and once via Medium (of all places).
Otherwise, I wasn’t cited at all.
Claude recommended that I note my current email marketing stats at this time, again for a baseline.
Here they are:
- Current active subscribers: 485
- Average Open Rate: 27.36%
- Average Click Through Rate: 2%
Step 2: Asking You to Help
Here’s the part where I need you to contribute to this experiment.
I mentioned in the Preferred Sources section that I’d appreciate it if you’d click on my Preferred Sources link and choose me as a Preferred Source in your Google Source Preferences.
Now, I will do it again.
I would really appreciate it if you would click on the button below and choose me as a Preferred Source.
You’ll be contributing to this experiment, you’ll help me out, and I hope you’ll learn something in the process, like how to choose other businesses as Preferred Sources.
While you’re there, search for your own website and see if you can be a Preferred Source too.
Once you’ve chosen my website as a preferred source, please reply to this email and let me know you’ve done it.
A simple “Done” is enough.
If you have questions or comments on this experiment, I’d love to hear them and I will respond.
Step 3: Wait
It is the nature of all experiments that they take time. I will have to let the robots do their thing and see if they actually start paying attention to your preferences.
While I wait, I will also add the Preferred Source button to my website. Specifically in the footer of my website and on my About page, as well as on several of the more recent Email Marketing Ecosystem newsletter pages.
Step 4: Re-Measure
In 4 weeks, I’ll see what the robots have been up to and whether we have collectively had any effect on their recommendations.
I will:
- Run the exact same six queries on the same 4 platforms using incognito mode.
- Compare my new results to my baseline.
- Ask you what you see when you run these same queries. The idea being you will see different results than I do, as your accounts are different from mine.
Again, if you want to participate in this experiment, please click on the button below and choose me as a Preferred Source.
If you want to do this same experiment with your subscribers, please play along! I’d love to hear what happens to your AI Search visibility too.
Step 5: Report My Findings
On July 17th, I will let you know the final results of this experiment in that week’s Email Marketing Ecosystem newsletter.
I’ll also see if I can put together a downloadable PDF with the steps to follow, so you can run this experiment yourself (if you don’t want to do it right away).
So, that seems like enough to be getting on with this week.
I hope this gives you some hope for your business in what has up until now seemed like a rather dark time for small businesses like ours.
Finally, This week’s picture is the typical view from my desk. Irusan likes to take his official place as my editor, mostly so he can get treats and pets.
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