Robby Stein, VP of Product for Google Search, was interviewed on the Silicon Valley Girl channel by Marina Mogilko about AI Search at Google. And one of the questions she asked was on how to show up in these Google AI responses. Robby Stein essentially said there is a lot of overlap between normal SEO for web search but the key difference are the "the kinds of questions" people ask AI versus traditional search.
They spoke about doing PR and press releases to help with showing up in the AI responses. I am not sure if that is a great strategy but he kind of whiffed over that topic. He spoke about how maybe buying reviews might not be the best strategy but again, glossed over it.
But he did say when it comes to SEO and AEO or whatever you want to call it, he said:
I think there's a lot of overlap. I think maybe one added nuance is that the kinds of questions that people ask AI are increasingly complicated and they tend to be in different spaces. And so if you think about what people use AI for, a lot of it is how-to for complicated things or for purchase decisions or for advice about life things. So people who are creating content in those areas like if I were them, I would be a student of understanding the use cases of AI and where what are growing in those use cases. I think there's been some you know studies that have done around what how people use these products and AI. It was really interesting to understand.
Here is the full video, this part starts at 13:30:
Here is the transcript:
Marina Mogilko: Give me some tips as a business owner who still runs Google ads. What should I focus on right now to be recommended by and actually my business is recommended by AI which is because we were doing a lot of content but maybe for you know some segments of my business that are not recommended what should I double down on for AI to consider me?
Robby Stein: Yeah interestingly the AI thinks a lot like a person would in terms of the kinds of questions it issues and so if you're a business and you're mentioned you know in you know top business list or from a a public article that lots of people end up finding. Those kinds of things become useful for the AI to to find, you know.
Marina Mogilko: Invest in your PR. That's something I've How to get your business recommended by AI been hearing a lot.
Robby Stein: So, it's not it's not really different from what you would do in that regard. I think ultimately, how else are you going to decide what business to go to?
Marina Mogilko: Well, you'd want to understand that, but also like sometimes I invest in PR and I ask my friends, have you seen that article? And they're like, no. But then I ask AI and it really sees the article and it uses that information. So, now you're investing in PR not for people to see it, but for AI.
Robby Stein: That's actually a good way of thinking about it because the way I mentioned before how our AI models work, they're issuing these Google searches as a tool. And so in the same way that you would optimize your website and think about how do I make helpful, clear information for people. So people search for a certain topic, my website's really helpful for that. Think of an AI doing that search now. Yeah. And then knowing for that query, here are the best websites given that question. That's now coming will come into the context window of the model. And so when it renders a response and provides all of these links for you to Why PR will define visibility in the AI era go deeper, that website's more likely to show up. Yeah. And so it's a lot of that standard best practices around building great content really do apply in the AI age for sure.
Marina Mogilko: What about reviews? Because some people buy reviews. I wonder like how it's going to affect the system.
Robby Stein: It's hard. I mean the reviews I I think again it's kind of like a person where like imagine something is scanning for information and trying to find things that are helpful. So it's possible that if you have reviews that are helpful, it could come up. But I think it's tricky to say to pinpoint any one thing like that. I think ultimately it's about these general best practices where what you want is reliable kind like if you were to Google something, what pages were to show up at the top of that query is still a good way of thinking about it.
Marina Mogilko: So basically the same as SEO, right?
Robby Stein: I think there's a lot of overlap. I think maybe one added nuance is that the kinds of questions that people ask AI are increasingly complicated and they tend to be in different spaces. And so if you think about what people use AI for, a lot of it is how-to for complicated things or for purchase decisions or for advice about life things. So people who are creating content in those areas like if I were them, I would be a student of understanding the use cases of AI and where what are growing in those use cases. I think there's been some you know studies that have done around what how people use these products and AI. It was really interesting to understand.
Hat tip to Gagan:
For getting visibility in AI Search - Google's Robby Stein!
— Gagan Ghotra (@gaganghotra_) October 31, 2025
being mentioned in top lists and public articles can help 👀
"if you're a business and you're mentioned in top business lists or from a public article that lots of people end up finding, those kinds of things become… https://t.co/AH61nIXj9N pic.twitter.com/nzYohccCot
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