SODP Dispatch - 12 March 2026

Are Google’s ‘preferred sources’ a good thing for online news?

By T.J. Thomson

Why do you see the results you do when you search for information online? It’s a complex mix of what the source is, its relationships to other sources online, and your own past browsing history and device settings.

But this formula is changing. Rather than being passively served content that search engines decide is most relevant (or businesses have paid to have promoted), some big tech platforms have started providing users more control over what they see online.

Earlier this year, Google launched the Preferred Sources feature in Australia and New Zealand. Through it, users can select organisations that are “preferred” and whose content they’d like to see more of in relevant search results.

In response, a raft of organisations, from news outlets to big banks, have started inviting their audiences and customers to choose them, with instructions on how to use this feature. News outlets such as the ABC, News.com.au, RNZ and The Conversation have all done so, among many others.

If you decide to use this new feature, there are potential benefits – but there can be unintended outcomes as well.

Where do you get your news? In Australia, more adults say they get news from social media (26%) than from online news websites (23%). This means that a feature like “preferred sources” might influence readers who get their news from search engines.

📊 Subscription LTV Calculator

Most subscription teams don't know their real LTV, they're working off blended averages and rough guesses. That's how profitable campaigns get paused and unprofitable ones get scaled. This free calculator tackles that gap by modelling what actually moves LTV: churn, renewal rates, annual plan adoption, and cohort behaviour over time. It outputs your net LTV per install, real Max CPA, and cohort accumulation, the same diagnostic framework used in live client work. If your team is making acquisition decisions without this visibility, it's worth a look.

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🤖 SODP Publishing Leadership Dinner in London

We're hosting an off-the-record dinner for senior product, engineering, and editorial leaders on Tuesday, June 9 at Cornus Restaurant, London (6:30 PM). The focus: how to build platforms that scale under pressure without sacrificing engineering velocity, governance, or editorial ambition. You'll get candid peer exchange on platform architecture, organisational resilience, and AI strategy. We will have Marcel Semmler (Global Chief Product Officer, Bauer Media Group) and Dmitry Shishkin (former CEO of Ringier Media International, advisor to BBC, Condé Nast, Thomson Reuters) as speakers for the day. There would be dinner, drinks, strategic insights that won't be shared publicly, and access to our private post-dinner network. Seats are limited.

Reserve your seat ▸

By Vahe Arabian

📍 Hyperlocal SEO: How Regional Publishers Win by Going Smaller, Not Broader

Hyperlocal content isn’t just community news; it’s becoming one of the most effective SEO strategies for regional publishers to build authority and grow sustainable traffic.

For regional publishers, competing with national outlets on broad topics is a losing battle. Search engines reward specificity, relevance, and proximity. Hyperlocal content covering issues, events, and stories tied to a particular region or suburb naturally aligns with local search intent. When paired with a solid local SEO framework, it positions publishers as the go-to source for community information.

Local SEO focuses on making content discoverable for geographically relevant searches.

For publishers, this can mean:

• Optimising articles with suburb or city modifiers in headings, titles, and metadata.

• Building strong internal linking structures between hyperlocal content pieces.

• Using schema markup such as LocalBusiness, NewsArticle, or Event to provide clearer signals to search engines.

• Tracking impressions and clicks from Google Search Console at the regional keyword level to guide content priorities.

These practices directly improve visibility in local SERPs, news results, and even Google Discover, where localised and timely content has a higher chance of surfacing.

Practical Opportunities for Publishers
Regional publishers can take advantage of hyperlocal SEO by:

1. Creating evergreen guides on “things to do” or “local area highlights” to capture consistent search demand.

2. Covering recurring events with optimised, updated pages that build search equity year after year.

3. Leveraging local data sources, council announcements, and community feedback to develop unique stories unavailable to larger publishers.

4. Monitoring keyword cannibalisation across neighbouring towns or suburbs and consolidating where necessary.

The opportunity is not just about traffic; it’s about engagement. Readers searching for local content are more likely to subscribe, share, and convert into loyal audiences.

Regional publishing has always been about serving communities. Local SEO and hyperlocal content now provide a scalable, data-driven pathway to make that service visible in search. Publishers who embrace this shift are more resilient against algorithm changes and better positioned to attract advertisers looking for engaged, location-specific audiences.

Engagement, reach, and super users shape the next phase of news subscriptions | INMA

News publishers may need to rethink some of their core assumptions about subscriptions, revenue, and audience growth, INMA Researcher-in-Residence Greg Piechota told industry executives Wednesday during a presentation at the INMA Media Subscriptions Summit in Toronto. Drawing on benchmarking data from hundreds of news organisations, Piechota said the strongest subscription growth in 2025 came from expanding reach and engagement rather than raising prices.“ What if I told you that last year, based on the data from more than 100 news brands with more than 20,000 subscriptions, actually those who grew the volume of subscriptions the fastest also grew their revenue the fastest,” said Piechota, who heads the INMA Readers First Initiative.

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OpenAI, Anthropic feud could help Google | Axios

Google is quietly expanding its Pentagon work — and growing users faster than its rivals — while Anthropic and OpenAI publicly spar over conditions for Defense Department work. Why it matters: Winning the AI race may depend on knowing when to stay out of scuffles. What they're saying: "When you have two major companies fighting each other, it is a good distraction for another company to come in and learn from their mistakes and just go all the way to the top," PitchBook's Harrison Rolfes tells Axios. State of play: Google is set to provide AI agents to the Pentagon's 3-million-person workforce for unclassified work, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

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With Newpress, Iz and Johnny Harris incubate video journalism for the creator era | NiemanLab

In 2020, after five years at Vox, journalist Johnny Harris left to start his own YouTube channel. Today, the channel he built with his wife Iz, featuring “videos that help you better understand the world,” has more than 7.5 million subscribers. Now the Harrises are using what they’ve learned to build a business that helps other creator-journalists. Last month, they announced the public launch of Newpress, a production company and community platform for creator journalists. Iz leads the company as CEO and executive producer.

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Google: Marketers ignoring AI tools are already falling behind | AdNews

Marketers who ignore AI tools are already falling behind on revenue, according to Dan Taylor, Google vice president of global ads.. “Marketers won't be replaced by AI, but they may certainly be replaced by marketers that are using AI more effectively than those that are not,” he said. “The opportunity for marketers is to focus on strategy.” A BCG study commissioned by Google found marketers deeply embedding AI tools into their workflows recorded 60% higher revenue growth than those later in the adoption journey.

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Why the answer in SEO is almost always ‘it depends’ | Search Engine Land

We joke every time we hear Google’s John Mueller answer a question with “it depends.” But actually, it’s true. There are few definitive answers or universally established facts in SEO. Do meta titles matter? Yes. Is internal linking a good practice? Yes. Is duplicate content bad for SEO? Yes. But if I tried to make a list of SEO questions with a single, clear, absolute answer, it wouldn’t be long. That’s the real challenge: we operate in an industry where things almost always depend on context, intent, competition, your website’s situation, and the platform itself.

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WordPress Launches Playground-Powered Personal Workspace, but Reception Is Mixed | The Repository

WordPress has launched my.WordPress.net, a full WordPress installation that runs entirely in your browser, requires no sign-up, and doesn’t disappear when you close the tab. Automattic-sponsored contributor Brandon Payton announced the personal workspace project on the WordPress.org News blog, framing it as an update to WordPress’s famous “five-minute install” philosophy for a browser-first era. “Your browser becomes your WordPress” is the announcement’s headline. Built on WordPress Playground, the project is the work of Alex Kirk, who leads a team at Automattic working on WordPress Playground.

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