SEO
Google says AI isn’t killing Search — it’s changing how people use it and making them search more often. AI Overviews help filter out low-value clicks while driving more total searches, Google’s VP of Search Liz Reid said in a new Bloomberg podcast interview.
On AI killing clicks. Reid said AI mostly cuts “bounce” clicks — when users click a page, grab a quick fact, and leave.
- “So clearly people sometimes want to spend a couple of seconds, and other times they’ll spend a whole hour listening to things. And so one of the things we see with the shift with AI Overviews is that, you get more of this pronouncement with what’s your goal?
- “If all you were going to do was go to the webpage, see the fact, and immediately click back, you’re going to spend like a half a second on the page. Okay. You see those things shift.
- “But if what you were going to go in and do is read an article for five minutes, you’re still interested in reading that article for five minutes, right?
- “[AI Overviews] might help you point to the right page so we see fewer bounce clicks where a user would sort of go and immediately come back because they weren’t happy.”
People want AI and the web. Reid said AI won’t replace websites — it works alongside them.
- “I think there’s this sort of myth that people want AI or the web… I actually think what we see is that people want AI on the web together.”
People use AI for quick answers, but still turn to the web for deeper information:
- “Sometimes people really want quick answers… and sometimes they want to go deep.”
That includes opinions and human perspectives:
- “People care often to hear people’s perspectives… their unique take.”
AI helps users get started, she said:
- “There’s an opportunity… to help you get started and then make it easy for you to dig in.”
AI Overviews are query-dependent. AI Overviews don’t show up for every search. Google decides based on what helps the user. If AI doesn’t help, Google sticks with regular results.
- “An important premise of this is that we shouldn’t give you AI for the sake of giving AI, right? The point is for it when we think it adds value to people.
- “So we have a variety of signals that try and help us understand, when is it adding value or not? And we get smarter over time as people … change how they ask questions [and] as the models get smarter. We don’t want to put an AI Overview if we think it’s not going to be high quality. So as the models have gotten more powerful, we can cover more cases, and just continue to develop really with the focus being what is the best response to give a user for the question they’ve asked.”
Changing query behavior. People are searching in new ways. Queries are longer and more natural, Reid said.
- “We have seen, with AI Overviews, meaningfully longer queries. We see more natural language queries.”
Users are also shifting away from keywords.
- “I do think one of the interesting things about the evolution of AI is that people stop talking just in keywordese as much, and they start expressing more of what they want. And then that becomes much easier for us to give an answer.”
Instead of simplifying queries, users now describe their full problem.
- “They tell you the real problem, right? They don’t take their need and translate it to what the computer understands. They try to give the computer their actual need and expect us to do the translation. And I think that’s really exciting to see because when we can be more helpful, but also, like, those are real problems people had.
- “Let’s actually, if you go back to the [Google] mission, was ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’ like that useful part. Right. It’s not just that it’s organized. Is it useful to you?
- “And I think one of the most exciting things about AI, the transformation going on right now is that you can actually make information much more useful to people. … So people just ask more questions because we can actually do a better job meeting their needs.”
Ads are evolving. Google says it can still make money from Search — even with AI answers:
- “Search only shows ads on… less than a quarter of queries.”
Many AI Overview queries were never monetized:
- “There’s a whole bunch of queries… that you don’t make money on because many of them are not of commercial need.”
But when people want to buy something, clicks still matter:
- “The answer doesn’t buy the pair of shoes, you actually have to buy the shoes, right? So you still have to go pick a merchant for that.”
Reid also suggested AI could improve ads by making queries more detailed:
- “If people start expressing more of their need… you can actually create better ads.”
And as search expands, so do opportunities:
- “There’s an expansion of queries… some of those queries are more commercial.”
What Google is watching. One key signal for Google is whether people return to Search more often.
- “Does it cause people to come to search more often?”
Reid said that’s a high bar:
- “It’s another thing to get you to decide you’re going to bother to unlock your phone.”
It’s not just about doing more searches — it’s about coming back more often:
- “Not just use search more often, but come more often.”
AI Mode vs. Search vs. Gemini. Google isn’t putting everything in one place. Different tools serve different needs, and users move between them.
- “There’s plenty of people who co-use across them.”
Search and AI Mode are often used for information.
- “If it’s an informational query… the probability that they’re using search or AI Mode is going to be higher.”
Gemini is used more for writing and creative tasks.
- “If it’s a creative query… those type questions are going to be more Gemini oriented.”
AI Mode tends to handle more complex questions.
- “AI Mode tends to be… more longer complex, more conversational queries.”
“AI slop” is not new — ranking is the solution. Low-quality content isn’t new — AI just makes more of it, Reid said:
- “Before AI slop, there was slop. There was human-generated slop. Now there’s AI-generated slop. There has always been slop on the web.”
Reid said it doesn’t matter how much human/AI slop there is. What’s more important is whether Google can surface great web content while keeping the rate of spam and slop at a “very low rate.”
- “It’s not a problem you solve because some of the people generating the spam, right? There’s a lot of financial incentives associated with it. But … what people have come to trust Google is that it will show great information. And it’s a thing that we will continue to put a huge amount of effort in.”
The interview. Google’s Liz Reid on Who Will Own Search in a World of AI | Odd Lots
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