Google’s Robby Stein talks about AI Search on Lenny’s Podcast

written by Gagan Ghotra

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Google’s Robby Stein from Search team and VP of Product was recently on well known in tech circles podcast “Lenny’s Podcast”

They talked about a lot of topics but below are some key quotes which I found interesting. All these are about AI Search and future of Google Search, how things are changing …..

The Future of Search and Content

  1. whether AI is killing core search
    “The core Google search isn’t really changing in my opinion. We’re not seeing that… AI is expansionary. There’s actually just more and more questions being asked and curiosity that can be fulfilled now with AI.”
  2. the shift in user search behavior
    “You can actually use natural language in Google. That’s the biggest shift we’re seeing people asking real long hard complex questions because you just don’t think I can go to Google and type in like what’s a great place for a date night. I already went to these four restaurants. I’m looking for outdoor dining and my friend has this allergy.”

How AI Overviews and AI Mode Work

  1. the mechanics of how the AI generates answers
    “When our AI constructs a response, it’s actually trying to does something called query fanout where the model uses Google search as a tool to find to do other querying… It’ll add and append all these other queries like maybe dozens of queries and start searching basically in the background.”
  2. how the AI accesses Google’s core signals
    “There is a unique access to Google. Google’s obviously it’s part of Google search so it’s Google search signals everything from spam like what’s content that could be spam and we don’t want to probably use in a response all the way to wow this is like the most authoritative helpful piece of information we’re going to link to it.”

Content Strategy for the AI Era (AEO – AI Engine Optimization)

  1. continued importance of creating helpful content
    “If for a given search, your web page is designed to be extremely helpful. And you can look up, you know, Google’s human rater guidelines and read, you know, it’s a very long document that’s been thoughtfully crafted for decades now around, you know, what makes great information.”
  2. value of originality
    “Is it original or is it repeating things that have been repeated 500 times? And there’s these best practices that I think still do largely apply because it’s going to ultimately come down to an AI is doing research and finding information.”
  3. On how to adapt your content strategy for AI-driven queries
    “If I were a creator, I would be thinking, what kind of content is someone using AI for? And then how could my content be the best for that given set of needs?”

Understanding User Intent (a core marketing principle)

“Jobs to Be Done” framework for marketing and product
“Don’t think of users as using your product. Think of users as hiring you to do something for them… People don’t want a quarter inch drill, they want a quarter inch hole. So what is someone trying to do? You have to understand that deeply and then you can build an amazing product.”

Also the full episode on YouTube too!

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