SourceSignal
Google Preferred Sources for WordPress, without the code.
Google lets readers choose publications they want to see more often. SourceSignal gives WordPress publishers a straightforward way to add that prompt to their sites, choose how it looks, decide where it appears and measure the interactions the site can actually see.
Why we built it
When Google launched Preferred Sources, we wanted to add it to our own publications.
The basic Google code was simple enough. Getting it to behave properly across WordPress, different placements, mobile devices, caching and the rest of an existing publishing site took more work.
So we built SourceSignal.
It gives publishers a way to manage Preferred Sources prompts without editing code. We use it on our own sites.
Created by John Byrne at Hooray Media to solve problems we ran into running our own publishing sites.
SourceSignal Free
Everything you need to add and manage Google Preferred Sources prompts on a WordPress site.
- WordPress
- Preferred Sources prompt
- Google’s flow
- No code
- Install the plugin, choose your settings and turn it on.
- Choose how it looks
- Use Google’s official control or one of SourceSignal’s other prompt treatments.
- Choose where it appears
- Place prompts automatically or add them where you want them.
- Preview before publishing
- See how the prompt will look before readers see it.
- Measure what your site can measure
- SourceSignal can count prompt views, clicks and launches of Google’s flow.
- Works with caching
- SourceSignal is designed to work on WordPress sites using page caching and CDNs.
What SourceSignal can — and can’t — tell you
Google does not report completed Preferred Sources selections back to publishers.
SourceSignal can report the interactions it can observe on the publisher’s site and that Google’s flow was opened, but it cannot report a completed add.
SourceSignal is an independent publisher tool. It is not made by, affiliated with, sponsored by, endorsed by or certified by Google. “Google” is used descriptively to identify the feature the plugin works with.
SourceSignal Pro
Private betaPromote Preferred Sources beyond your website and measure the part of the funnel you can actually see.
Pro requires Free (WordPress refuses to activate it otherwise). Free never changes because Pro is installed, and Free stays free.
Sold and delivered through Freemius (checkout, license, invoices, updates). Not on WordPress.org
- Campaign links
- A permanent address on the publisher’s own domain — yoursite.com/prefer/summer-guide — to paste into a newsletter, a social post, a partner’s page. Opening it shows a small page on the publisher’s site with the Preferred Sources invitation; one tap opens Google’s flow; a Continue link sends the reader on to wherever the publisher chose.
- QR codes for print
- Every campaign has a downloadable QR code (SVG, scales to any size). The code holds the campaign address, never the destination, so what the reader lands on can change long after the code is printed.
- Works in the messy places
- Email apps, Instagram and Facebook in-app browsers, iPhone Safari signed in and out, second opens, JavaScript off — verified on a real iPhone.
- Publisher-controlled addresses
- The destination can be changed at any time.
- Once a campaign has been active its address is permanent. Giving it a new address keeps the old one answering.
- Campaigns can be paused (forward readers without inviting them) or retired.
- Published addresses keep working when the license lapses. The license decides whether campaigns can be created or changed and whether updates arrive — not whether a printed code works. (The one thing that stops a printed code is deactivating the plugin, and the admin says so.)
Honest campaign numbers
per campaign, today and the last 30 days, counted on the publisher’s own site
| Visits | requests for the address, including scanners and link previews |
|---|---|
| Visits from machines | the part that looked like a bot, a prefetch or a link preview |
| Seen in a browser | page loads shown in a browser for a moment and reported back — not a count of people |
| Tapped | page loads on which the invitation button was tapped |
| Google’s flow opened | times the plugin asked Google to open its flow; Google does not say what happened next |
| Google’s code did not load / No sign of Google’s window / Readers without JavaScript | the three fallbacks |
| Continues | arrivals at the destination by way of the continue link |
| Dismissals | “No thanks, continue” |
| Forwarded (already asked) | readers sent straight on because this browser had been asked recently |
Each row counts page loads, not actions. Nothing is stored about the reader: no IP, no hash, no user agent, no cookie. Event rows live a few days; daily totals are kept for 400 days. Nothing about readers reaches Hooray, Freemius or Google from the plugin.
Pro uses the Freemius SDK for licensing and updates. Activating a license connects the site to Freemius and sends the site URL, plugin version and the activating user’s name and email; nothing is sent before activation, nothing is sent from a reader’s visit, and campaign counts never leave the publisher’s site.