Liz Reid, Google's Head of Search, was interviewed by Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis on the AI Inside podcast. In that interview, Liz Reid said Google wants great content to shine in its search results and AI experiences. She said, "we really do want great content to shine and continue to connect people to it."
The interview goes through many pain points site owners and publishers have with the new Google search generative experiences. Including Google sending less traffic, how Google won't give us click data for AI Mode and AI Overviews in Search Console, are searchers happier with the new Google search experiences and more. And yes, as the title of the episode suggests Liz Reid on What Publishers Get Wrong About AI.
Here is the interview:
Here are my notes from this interview:
Where Publishers Get It Wrong, According To Google
- Publishers need to innovate on the formats people want; i.e. content vs video
- AI Overview is not a substitute for the ten minute article
- Publishers should produce content where they shine, the more searchers will click through
- Some add a paywall and say their traffic is down, that is what happens when you add a paywall
- Small publishers, it is an awesome time, because small publishers bring something unique and it makes it easier for Google to bring the user to that content
- Users want to hear from people with high quality content, not to check the time zone and come back.
- So build great content and Google will work to connect it
- Google wants great content to shine
How Publishers Can Make Their Content More Visible In AI Mode
- Make sure Google can access the content (Liz called Search Console "webmaster console")
- The more you build your audience, the more it will work in search and AI Mode
- Google published guidelines on this she said, here they are.
- Google does think about how to help build brands by adding in AI responses, this source said X.
- Google also thinks hard about how to drive traffic to those pieces of content.
Google Search Console AI Performance Reports
- Google rolled out AI performance reports and expanded access to those reports recently
- But no click data - "I think we're going to continue to look at what are the metrics that are useful," she said
- Then said this is all so new...
- Then she said that site owners need to build their own analytics to see what is valuable to them (sales, subscribers, clicks, downloads, etc).
Filter Bubble
- Google doesn’t show the best shoe for everyone, there is no such thing, so personalization there makes sense
- With top stories, Google has preferred sources but also shows the top sources as well, so there is a mix of personalized and non-personalized
- AI Overviews do this by showing you an overview of the topic
- Google is not narrowing what information is there but also not telling people what they need to trust
Agents
- Liz on how Google removes the friction to build in AI agents into Search
Liz Reid's Important Metrics
- Are users more satisfied with the experience
- Are users coming more often
- If the product is working well, people will bring more of their questions
- What are the questions people are not asking that Google can improve on
- Longer term, how to make Google more useful, not just give users information. Democratizing understanding the information and using that information, not just having access to that information.
At the end they spoke about bugs and how Google does do more testing for YMYL queries but things do slip through.
So - Google wants your content to shine folks!
Forum discussion at X.
