While Google may be doing its best to disrupt the lives of publishers, YouTubers, and anyone else who does business on the Internet, it is offering a tool that allows you to set The Autopian as “preferred source” on its platform. Is this worth anything? I have no idea, but it’s probably helpful to us if you click this link and add us as a preferred source. It’s also one of the best ways to get some of the most incredible tailight-focused news into your life.
That deeplink should auto-generate “The Autopian” as an option. If you’ve already got a list of preferred sources, you can make us the newest one on the list. If not, you can add other sites that you find as trustworthy as The Autopian (Cat Fancy, Einkommende Zeitungen, etc.). I presume we’ll be at the top of the list.
Once you do this, Google says “you’ll start to see more [Autopian] articles prominently displayed within Top Stories, when those sources have published fresh and relevant content for your search.” Great. This only works in the United States and India, for now.
If clicking on a link is not appealing to you and you’d rather click a button, you can also do that here:
As a reminder, we’ve also lowered the price of our monthly membership to just $5 if that’s appealing to you. Thanks!
I did it. I had to catch my breath and ice my finger, but I did it. Oh, the pain!
I have an app hot link that is on my Home Screen on my phone, tablet and an old fashioned home screen hot link on my computers haha.
Done and done.
Done
Hopefully this helps my Google news feed, which is a mixed bag between my interests and non-intrests. For example, Google decided last week I was really into Brian Setzer, which I am not.
Black and orange stray cat sittin’ on a fence
Ain’t got enough dough to pay the rent
I’m flat broke but I don’t care
I strut right by with my tail in the air
Stray cat strut, I’m a ladies cat
I’m a feline Casanova, hey man, that’s that
Get a shoe thrown at me from a mean old man
Get my dinner from a garbage can
Meow
Yeah, don’t cross my path
That was a great song.
Matt will need to fill David in on The Stray Cats.
I believe it was called The Stray Cat Strut and yes it was a good song shown regularly on MTV, back when all they had was music videos.
Go see him live and you will be
Heck now you can probably get him to deliver you a Pizza.
And to be clear, I don’t have anything against Brian Setzer, it’s just not my jam. Just like how you’re not into *band you’re not interested in*
Done
As much as I detest the data miner and privacy-killer known as Google and avoid contact with all of their properties, I’ll do this. For the Autopian, to game the algorithm and to screw Google in some manner.
Anything for kagi.com, if you want a search engine that works well?
In kagi, you can ‘pin’ a website so it will appear at the top of any search results. Just do any search where TheAutopian appears, and use the little shield to set it to “Higher” or “Pin” under website ranking adjustments
“…Now we are engaged with a great search engine , testing whether this website, or any website so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure…”
Boldly going where no website has gone before.
Seeking strange old turn signals.
These are the voyages of the starship Autopian.
Autopian-the T-shirt, Autopian-the Coloring Book, Autopian-the Lunch box, Autopian-the Breakfast Cereal, Autopian-the Flame Thrower. The kids love this one.
Done. Hopefully, this means fewer garbage AI stories in my feed, though at this point, I recognize them from the topshot pic always being an immaculate rear shot of whatever fake car.
You can also do the opposite and block sources from your feed, so to get rid of those click the three dots, pick block and if it asks for a reason click untrusted source.
Done. The Autopian is now my one and only source for all information. I’m not sure how much more Autpoian content I will get given that I look at the site daily, but I’m about to find out.
Done! I do wonder if it’ll help much since we’re pretty much all already here, but hey, if it’s some invisible metric that Google needs to promote the squad to Car Royalty of the Internet, I’m game.
Since this doesn’t really go anywhere else, I finally got an inner tie rod tool set and the the Icon ball joint master kit today and I am PUMPED. My equipment to ability ratio is now correctly imbalanced again.
I love that it now appears as if my one and only source for news is The Autopian.
Appears? People get news from other sources?
Honestly, since last November my only other source has been nytimes. Specifically the Games app.
I don’t use google for news feeds much, but I did add it as requested. Will be interesting to see how that changes things for me.
Didn’t work for me either – I turned off personalization as I don’t like Google knowing how much time I spend reading Bulgarian Cheese Digest.
It appears my setup won’t play.
I do keep cookies from you guys though.
Source preferences
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Your account is not eligible for this type of personalization preference.
Preferences improve recommendations for you. Manage your Search personalization.
Running into the same issue. If I need to allow tracking and data mining to set my own preferences, this is a no go.
What about Apple News? I don’t see The Autopian, but I do see the Drive and other sites
Done. It’s nice that some of the porn in my feed will be of the taillight variety.
Done! I also click Autopian links when they appear in Google News, even if I’ve already read the article.
I wish google had the opposite setting. I’d have a much longer list of sites I don’t prefer
Done, but also what Matt said above: “If not, you can add other sites that you find as trustworthy as The Autopian (Cat Fancy, Einkommende Zeitungen, etc.).”
Be sure to add other sites that you trust as well. I added my main ones (theringer.com and arstechnica.com) but also other important sites, too (like NPR, PBS.org, and Consumer Reports).
Oh, Ars, that’s a good idea (and the others, but Ars and Autopian tabs never get closed)
Done, but I’m really hoping this is less of a problem with Google and more of a problem with AI programmers trying to game Google’s algorithm and hopefully Google will make the necessary adjustments to fix it. I can’t imagine anyone at Google wants their results slopped up like this.
Or am I just too much of an optimist? I mean, one day GM will totally bring Oldsmobile back, right?
Every site tries to game the system even if it is just keywords and reporting it doesn’t seem to do a damn thing.
Google has an AI arm, so there’s no chance they’re going to do anything that harms AI slop. Hell, they’re probably the biggest purveyor of AI slop thanks to the fact that it appears at the top of every search result now.
And done!
Did a click, autopian is now the first and only thing on that list, though I can’t remember the last time I actually did a google search, lol.
It was well before all the AI mess that’s for sure.
My problem with Google Search is even if you put a web address in the search bar you will get 8 or 9 sponsorship other sites than a list of suggestions for other searches and only then the actual site
Done!