Google's Search VP on Generative AI in Search, User Notes on Search Results, and SEOs — With Cathy Edwards

0:00Google Search VP Kathy Edwards joins us to break some news about some rather interesting changes to Google search and discuss generative AI's role in their work and what's with those SEOs. All that and more coming up right after this. LinkedIn presents.

0:20Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Today, we're joined by Kathy Edwards, a VP of Search at Google. We've talked before. It's great to have you on the show so we can actually continue this conversation to break some of your news and also follow up on some of the conversations that we've had before. Kathy, welcome to the show. Thanks, Alex. It's great to be here. Great to have you. The last time we spoke, you and I were having like a little bit of a disagreement about generative search experiences. I was saying that I had to worry about as a publisher, would traffic ever come to publishers anymore if everybody's just going to get all the answers at the top of search?

1:01And you had mentioned that this would spark people's interest in going to visit a number of different links. And so it's really the main question about this product is, is it going to keep people within Google or still make room for the open web? You're a number of months into the labs experiment right now where people search. They get a conversational answer at the top through the search generative experience. I have that turned on in my labs and you have the data. So what are you seeing right now? And where my fear is overblown? Yeah, look, I think your fears are totally reasonable. and we definitely have designed SGE specifically as a jumping off point for the open web.

1:42We really want to make sure that as we're bringing generative AI into search, that we're really thinking about the health of the open web. And we just, as we talked about last time, we just really genuinely believe that people want to hear information from other people, from other sources, not just from Google or from a chatbot. Do you know what I mean? And so we're really excited to say that we're seeing that not only are we showing more links on the page, but that we're seeing like a new diversity of clicks coming off the page and that that's really encouraging early data. It's still really early.

2:20I just want to repeat that. Like we're still early on in this whole experiment, but I'm really encouraged by the data that we're seeing. Interesting. So when you say a new diversity of clicks, that could be taken in so many different ways. I guess what people really are curious about is, does that mean people are clicking more out to the open web or less? Well, it's sort of hard to say at this point. The data that we have is, because it's an opted-in experience, you can't just A-B test it like we would if we were just rolling it out. But we are seeing more links and a range of different clicks going out.

2:57So we're pretty encouraged by the way that I think generative AI can sort of help people explore the diversity of content on the web. Okay, I'm going to try to read behind the lines here and you can tell me if I'm being ridiculous or if this is not something that you want to get into. To hear that there's a range of different links and a diversity of clicks to me, it leads me to believe that people are actually clicking out less to the open web. Otherwise, it would be easy to say we're seeing more clicks. Am I misinterpreting that or what am I getting wrong here? I can understand that you're like, hey, Google, you have all the data.

3:32Like, of course, why wouldn't you just be able to give me a simple yes or no question? It's actually like it's driving our statisticians mad right now because it's an opt-in experience. We actually don't really know. We haven't run an A-B test at scale yet. So it's actually something we genuinely like don't fully know the answer to. but we know that we do still see people clicking. And we're pretty excited about the way that users are finding even more long-tail content as part of this experience. And long-tail content means stuff that might have been on the second or third or fourth page of search.

4:07And actually, when you're typing in a query and search generative experience is answering, it's going to look much deeper and say, hey, this might be relevant and surface it to you. Am I getting that right? Yeah, that's right. Well, that's great news because big technology loves to be on the second, third, and fourth page. So very happy about that. One of the reasons why you're releasing this in labs is obviously to kind of see how things are going and see whether people are using it, adopting it, and whether it's something that makes sense to roll out to the broader product. So how are you evaluating the performance of these generative search answers within Google?

4:42And I know the data is early, but you must be evaluating on some metrics. How does it look? And do you think this is going to be something that we're going to end up seeing rolled out to the broader population? Yeah, we're really excited by what we're seeing. We're seeing, you know, we track things on a few different fronts. We look at our user research where we actually survey users, as well as obviously our metrics that we track from a business perspective. And we're seeing that users are really excited about this experience. Like sentiment is higher. We're also seeing users do more complex queries, which is great.

5:20It's really, to me, one of the strongest pieces of evidence that this is helping because it's unlocking these things that users maybe didn't feel like they could ask before. And so we're pretty jazzed about that. Now, having said that, it's early. And we want to be really careful here. You know, Sundar has said repeatedly, bold and responsible is the way forward. And so we're really taking our time to make sure we feel like we've nailed it before we graduate. And there's definitely, I would imagine, a bit more time because Bing, which initially seemed like a bigger threat, doesn't seem to be making much headway at all in its battle against Google.

6:00I'm curious. I mean, I'd open the floor for you to comment on that if you want. But let me just ask another question in case you don't want to touch that. what does advertising look like when it comes to these generative experiences? Because, you know, you write the question, it pops down a big page of text. And I don't know if I've seen any ads there. Is the monetization side different from the typical Google search? Is that developed yet? And is that going to hold back this thing from primetime? If you decide from a product end, we like this, let's roll it out. Yeah. So firstly, as you might expect, We're really focused on our users and the health of the web ecosystem.

6:41And that's what we're really focused on as we're building this experience. To the ads point, you know, I'm sure you've heard we keep ads in organic very separate at Google. And so you'd have to talk to the ads team if you want to know how ads are doing. So that's not even playing in at all to your experiment right now with this product? We're really focused on building a really great product for users and making sure that the web ecosystem is really healthy. Let me put in my one feature request. Sure. I think it's just slow. And I understand why, because it takes a much larger level of compute resources to do it.

7:20But when I Google something and I have this generative search on, I'm already scrolling down to the results by the time this thing decides what it wants to tell me. Look, I totally hear you on that. It's something we're working really hard on. And we've actually made some pretty amazing progress even in the past six months in terms of speeding it up. But it's still clearly not fast enough. And that, to be frank, is one of the reasons why we don't put it in everyone's hands. And it's still an opt-in thing at this stage. Now, you know, if I have confidence in anything, it's Google's ability to continue to improve its compute efficiency.

7:57And so I'm pretty confident we're going to see it continue to come down. So Substack has a toggle for me that I can decide whether I want generative models to train on the data that I produce data, basically my articles on big technology. And I don't get any money for it, but I have it switched on because I kind of actually think about your product. Like if I'm on that third page and I have it switched on and others have it switched off, then there's a chance that I actually end up getting way more readership. That being said, like it is helping to power, you know, this training is helping to power billion dollar products across the board.

8:36You know, maybe it's with Google, maybe it's with OpenAI. I don't even know. There's no transparency there. What do you think I should do? Do you think I should keep that on? Do you think I should like call Substack and be like, pay me for this? Or should we should us as publishers be speaking more directly with companies like yours and finding out the right value exchange for the content that is trained on? I mean, recency, right? We do news. If people are asking what's happening today, that's actually quite important for a model. So I'm curious what your perspective is on that. So firstly, I can't tell you what you should do, but I can tell you.

9:08What would you do if you were me? Let's, you know, speculate, have some fun. I think it's really critically important that publishers like yourself have control and they have the choices. And so I'm really pleased that we announced this Googlebot extended control for robots.txt. For those of you who don't know, this is a way at which a site owner can instruct the various bots that are out crawling the web, whether or not those bots can use your content that's on that website or not. And so Search has had generative models in it for years and years, even prior to SGE. So that's still controlled by Googlebot, which has been our bot that's existed for 25 years plus.

9:53But now with Googlebot Extended, you can choose to opt out of bot and our Vertex APIs, which are our Google Cloud generative AI APIs. and I'm really encouraged to see that other players in the ecosystem are being responsible and also publishing their their control so the publishers have the ability to choose what they want to do and what's right for their business exactly but it's a tough it's tough because if you say no okay listen if you're doing if no one's gonna opt out in the right mind will opt out of search because I mean I'm sure some do but I won't because people see the link and they'll come to the product, right?

10:32And I guess, yes, search is a billion-dollar, multi-billion-dollar, multi-trillion-dollar business, right? When it comes to allowing these models to train on publisher material, we are basically building the training data that is being used to create these billion-dollar companies to the point where Andreessen Horowitz, recently in a submission to the copyright agency in the US, was like, if we're forced to pay for the copyright for the material that we trained on, our billions of dollars of investment in AI companies will be worth a lot more. Do we need to get to a point where there's a fair value exchange here between the publishers and the tech companies that are using this to build very lucrative business?

11:13It has to be a little bit more than like opt-in, opt-out, don't you think? So look, I think we're really early. You're going to hear me say that a lot. I do genuinely think we're really early. And I think it's really, I mean, I will say you've said, you know, multi-billion dollar businesses. I don't think there's a multi-billion dollar generative AI business in terms of revenue yet. I mean, valuations are one thing. Right. It will get there. I mean, open AI itself is 1.3 billion run rate this year. So. Sure. I think, and you'd have to ask them about like what they think in terms of a value exchange, but in terms for us, we definitely are focused on how do we make sure that the web is healthy as we go through all of this, obviously like the web changed humanity for the better.

11:57And it's, you know, really important for the world, I think. And so we're really focused on being good stewards of that. I think having publisher control so you can choose to be in or out is the right thing. And then I think over time, we'll figure out if there are other business models needed. Okay, it'll be interesting to watch it play out. And yeah, I don't know. I think generative there's definitely some use cases that I'm using generative search for. honestly it's become like a crucial and I know Google was doing this beforehand but thesaurus for me and like almost like a mini Wikipedia in some cases but yeah it'll be very interesting to watch it evolve and I'm very curious about the business situation as it plays out let's talk now about the news that you came here to share I mean this is cool we're going to be breaking some news as this podcast goes out so apologies if we gave the competition 12 minute heads up here But look, you have these two new features coming out, one that's rolling out more broadly, one that's very interesting coming out in labs.

12:57The first is called Follow. And I'm just going to quote right off the blog post that you've sent over before. So it says, we're introducing the ability to follow exactly what you're interested in from your favorite sports team to something more specific like vegan cooking. With Follow, you'll see more content related to what you care about across search with less effort. So does this mean I'm going to be able to like follow newspapers, sports teams, the latest in like, you know, stir fry recipes, which is basically the only thing I can cook? I mean, what is it going to look like in practice? Yeah.

13:32So the concept is, you know, what's so amazing about search is that you can type in any query, right? And no matter how weird or specific long tail it is, you can type in any query and get some results. And so the concept is that you can come in and follow those search queries. And so whether that search query is your favorite sports team or whether that query is something really long tail, like maybe it's not even stir fry recipes, it's like stir fry recipes containing broccoli that are gluten free, right? Like you can follow something that specific. And then in Discover, the homepage of the Google app.

14:15And on that search results page, if you do the query again, you'll see content that's new for you, including perspectives from across the web. So it's a really great way of sort of staying on top of that interest that you have. That's fascinating. And so when is that going to roll out? So we're starting to roll that out as of the day that this podcast goes live. We're going to take it a little slow, but it'll definitely be out by fully to every single person by December. Very interesting. So what I'm sensing is like there's stuff that shows up on the web that you might want to know about, but the only way to find out about it is to just frequently Google, try to find it.

14:58Right. And so this is just a way to be like, all right, you want to know what, I mean, it's amazing how specific you're getting also. You want to know what's going on in these areas you talk about. We're actually going to push it to you. Exactly. And I think that's cool. That's, you know, this is just Google understands information so amazingly. How can we help you stay on top of that without having to, you know, require you to come back and do a query all the time? Can you talk a little bit about, I mean, this is, it's interesting because of course it's a helpful feature. It also feels like something that's so intuitive and it's amazing that we're here in, you know, year 20 plus of Google and we're just starting to see this.

15:35So what was the compelling event to create something like this inside the company? uh it's a good question i think we just really have been very focused on understanding what was going on with users and we saw um you know we did this thing uh maybe last year i can't actually even remember the timing uh that we in that uh where we put these widgets at the top of discover that are connected to sort of different things you might want to stay on top of so there's a weather widget. There's a stock widget. There's a cricket widget, which like the cricket world cup is going on right now, which I'm very interested in.

16:11You are probably not, but believe me, I'm very interested in it. I don't have the patience for cricket. It's a very good game. You should, you should give another go. Try a T20 game. But anyway, what we saw is that these people love these widgets and they just keep coming back and like, what's going on? Like I now wake up every morning and I'm like, what's going on with the cricket? And I, and I checked these widgets and we really had this insight that sometimes the query, it's amazing that you could come to Google and express anything you want. Right. But sometimes to just continue to express over and over is a little tiresome, right?

16:49So this idea, this really proved to us that there was this idea that users just want to stay on top of their information without having to do the queries. And we really wanted to extend that. So it wasn't just like the few widgets that we came up with, but that users could really do anything and express their interests how they already are expressing their information needs to Google today, which is the search query. So absolutely. So I want to go back to our AI or generative AI conversation. You know, for a long time, we've been hearing Google talk about how this company is going to become not just a place where you search, but something that is assistive, right?

17:24Something that kind of knows what you're interested in or you help shape what it knows that you're interested in and it will push that to you. And I'm hearing this and it's like interesting because it's like, of course, this is going to happen in the main search area, but it also feels like this is something that you might want to tune like your Google assistant for. We don't really hear a lot about the Google assistant anymore. So is this kind of something that as we end up, I mean, forming more personalized relationships with Google seems like another way, another way that that happens is through an assistive agent.

17:57So is this sort of sort of the groundwork for that? Can you see this playing in there? Tell us a little bit about your thoughts on that front. Yeah. I mean, so firstly, I'll say the assistant just announced some very exciting news just recently. So you should go check that out and definitely more to come here. But wait, wait, what's the updates on the assistant? So we announced that we're bringing Bart into the Assistant, which will be launching soon. It's pretty exciting. I don't know a lot more of the details. You'll have to talk to them about that. But there's a bunch of very exciting stuff happening on that front.

18:31I think for us, we're really focused on like, what is the core mission of Google search? It is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible. Right. And so that focus is where we are really like, how can we just improve that over time? And I think the questions about, you know, an assistant, you ideally want to do more for you. You also wanted to read your email and maybe book a restaurant for you and those sorts of things. We're really focused around this concept of just how do you get your information? How do you answer the questions that you have? And how do you stay on top of your interests?

19:09Right. And there's also some news with the perspectives side of things, if I'm not mistaken, that when you're searching on Google mobile right now, there's a perspective tab that will include things like tweets and blog posts and stuff like that. So you're going to roll that out more broadly also. Yeah, we're bringing it to desktop. This is something that we're really super excited about. We really have heard loud and clear that users really want the perspectives of other people when they're searching for information. And it's been doing so great on mobile. So we're really excited that it's finally coming to desktop too.

19:43Yeah, I personally enjoy it. For me, it's also a way to sort of stay on top of what's happening on Twitter or X without like really having to log in very much. Like when I take my mandated time away from the app, when I feel my mental health going down the toilet, I still want to check on what's going on in the world. And this is actually like a pretty cool module. So on that note, okay, there was a moment where we had social media, right? Where we would follow our interests and people would push our interests to us through feeds. Now, that still exists just kind of in weakened forms on places like Facebook, but also X and Threads and Blue Sky or True Social, whatever you use.

20:25And, you know, it's also like I'm seeing Google come in to talk a little bit more about what's the latest that happened. And it feels like, you know, intentional or not, this is an opportunity to take advantage of that vacuum that's being left by social media going to its next evolution. Is that something you think about? And is that an opportunity for you? I'm not saying build Google Plus again, but I'm wondering, you know, how that factors. Yeah, I mean, we're definitely, this is not a social network we're building. We're really focused on the idea of people following their interests and staying on top of their information needs.

21:02It's not about. Which is exactly, but that's exactly like what you would do on Twitter. I'm not saying you're going to, you're building a new Twitter, but it does seem like the decline there has left an opening for you. Well, I don't know. I don't really see it that way. I think we're really focused on, you know, and I think honestly, social media is doing pretty great. more generally. I mean, I think like TikTok's going fantastically, Instagram's going fantastically. So I'm not particularly worried about the health of social media overall as a segment. Obviously, that's something we rely on for our perspectives filter.

21:37So we're really invested in making sure that all works really well. I think that we're just really focused on how do we help people with their information needs? And it just seemed this really great opportunity to sort of allow people to stay on top of that more proactively. I just think this data in the big technologies newsletter this past week, but it's actually worth highlighting because you're right, Instagram is doing incredibly. It's engaged hours per day, 1.1 billion, and its growth year over year is up 29%. So that's wild. The reason why I say you have an, and this is per Sensor Tower, which is an app analytics company.

22:18The reason why I say there's an opportunity to fill a gap here is because Twitter's engaged hours per day is down 8%. So, but anyway, I understand that if it's not like you don't want to be in that category and it's probably not something that you're focusing all too much. Just looking at it from the outside though, it does seem like an opportunity. All right. Let's go to a quick break. Kathy Edwards is here. Search VP for Google. You might know Google. It's the place where you search. Everyone says search is, you know, boring and static. I disagree every time Kathy and I talk. We have so many interesting things to discuss.

22:48Speaking of which, on the other side of this break, we're going to talk about Notes. It's a new product and it makes Google a little bit more, I don't know, interactive or community focused. Anyway, I'm going to just leave that tease and hope you stay with us after the ad so we can talk more about Notes. Did you know your credit card points and miles can lose value to inflation? Credit card companies often reduce the redemption value of your points and miles. Now, imagine a credit card with rewards that can grow in value. With the Gemini credit card, you can earn Bitcoin or one of over 50 other cryptos instantly with no annual fee.

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