Google’s AI Search Expert: How to Get Ahead Before AI Changes Everything | Robby Stein

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1:00Interestingly, AI thinks a lot like a person would. If I were them, I would...

1:05Marina Mogilko:This is Robbie Stein, VP of product at Google Search, the man behind how ranking actually works inside the world's biggest search engine. You can see what it's doing. It says kicking off searches. It's looking for sushi restaurants. And so you could just book it. Oh, wow. Remember those stories where a mention in ChatGPT or another AI app made a business blow up overnight? A small bistro in Paris doubled its bookings. A restaurant in LA went viral just because AI recommended it. And Google ranking works the same way. So now you're investing in PR and not for people to see it, but for AI. Right.

1:38Marina Mogilko:In this video, Robby reveals how to make your business AI visible and use Google's own systems to get discovered, ranked, and recommended faster than ever. This video is sponsored by HubSpot. Robby, welcome to Silicon Valley, girl. Let's talk about search. Thanks for having me. Okay. I want to start with this question that is aimed for my audience who are 20, 25 years old. How should they think about search these days and internet in general? So what's going on? Well, I say that search is now a place where you can truly ask anything and get pretty effortless information about whatever you have on your mind.

2:18And I think ultimately people are using it for so many different things and that's not changing. You can still use Google for all the ways you do to research homework, to look up specific types of websites and find information that way. But also you can ask natural language questions. You don't have to use what we call keywordese sometimes. You can just ask exactly what you want. It could be multiple sentences. And now Google has AI that can tap into all of the knowledge and context that Google has about the web, about the world, about products to help give you better information.

2:46Marina Mogilko:OK. And full off right here, what about information about me? because I have Gmail, right? I have my YouTube channel, which runs on Google, right? I have my Google Drive with all the files, all my spreadsheets. Does it tap into that knowledge or not yet? So something we're working on. We announced at I.O. an opportunity for users in the future to be able to opt into an experience with enhanced personalization. So it's something that we're thinking about too for the same reason that you have. And we want people to be able to help Google and help the services know more about you so that it can be more helpful.

3:21Because if you know the kinds of brands you love, if you know the kinds of places you go, if you know about a school project that's coming up, you can do more interesting things for people.

3:29Marina Mogilko:When is it coming? So TBD, but we did launch recently some steps in this direction. So in labs now, you can now opt into a new experiment if you turn on AI mode in Google Labs for search labs for personalizing shopping and local restaurant for local recommendations for restaurants. And so you'll start to see a little bit more enhancement there, But obviously we're excited to connect more services like Gmail down the road. Okay, this is something that I actually liked. Of course, I would have wanted it to access my channel analytics and give me more first lives thing. But what I did is I uploaded this research, like what's going to happen in 2027.

4:04Marina Mogilko:And I asked it to create a narrative for me for my next videos and write a script. It did the whole scripting thing. Very nice. The only thing, thumbnails, I would ideally like it to actually generate thumbnails because I asked it to generate thumbnails and it was like, no, here's your text. Is there a way to ask it to follow my commands, I guess, more precisely? Yeah, we're working through a few of those kinds of things, but you should be able to prompt it pretty specifically. We just, we don't have image gen as a core capability. And so that piece it's not going to do, but it should be able to find you images.

4:38Nana Manana right now is in a Gemini app feature.

4:41Marina Mogilko:Okay. Yeah. From the user experience, it feels like you have so many cool things. I just wanted to bring them all together in one super apt because like now it's like using different different tabs okay the next one i only have an hour and need a click lunch spot this was actually super cool because it knows i'm in los altos so it gave recommendations about los altos if you click on any of these places it brings all of the google context forward into this viewer so as you're browsing not only do you have the ai that's reasoning and finding great places for you but it makes it really easy to browse so you can actually see the place before you're going it shows you you know they're opening close times it has menu highlights it has reviews and so this is really bringing together the power of ai with all the google's context and information so you could kind of browse each of these places before you go and it all happens in one product experience convenient representation okay this one right about like lunch find and book it for me so it's going to probably take a few minutes but you can see what it's doing it says kicking off searches it's looking for sushi restaurants open table uh resi sushi it's finding options across a bunch of different yoshi sushi um sumo and then it's gonna research this for you and then you'll get an alert when it's finished and then it'll show you options of where you can book it there we go and so it basically researched this for a little while found you across talk if you go down yeah um it has it across um open table and it looks like there's some talk reservations for hiroshi yes and so you could just book it and it has all the times there.

6:13Marina Mogilko:But this is amazing. But it's pretty cool to see. That's amazing. And most of the work is this, like to look up all these restaurants individually would take you like 15 minutes. Yeah. But you can just now see it, click the thing and then be done. Yeah. So when I look for a restaurant, it gives me local recommendations. So it already knows where I am. How does it select the right results? Because I'm thinking about all the local businesses and businesses in general that run on search, right? They pay for ads. they have done their SEO optimization. So how does recommendation work now with AI mode?

6:45Yeah, so how AI mode works is that it does something called the query fanout technique, where a reasoning model will think about what you're asking, and then it will execute a bunch of questions related to it. So there could be dozens of related queries. It's literally using Google search as a tool, doing Googling under the hood, and then finding relevant information. And it can both, obviously, do a standard Google search and understand the web results, but also tap into the knowledge bases and real-time info systems at Google. So in this case, for local, it might pull information from 250 million plus real world places that exist.

7:18It's updated business information, many of which have local businesses that have updated their Google listings, and it can use all that information too. So it would find all of that. And then based on your question, if you say, hey, I want Italian, I want it to be kind of fun, it's maybe a date night, make it worth it, then it might find questions or issue queries like, hey, great experience, great for date nights. And then based on reviews, based on information that it finds, it'll produce a set of recommendations.

7:44Marina Mogilko:What about if someone paid for ads using this search query? So it doesn't use ads information. This is done entirely with what's on the web and what's within Google's information system. But if a business has claimed their local business and has modified that, put menu information in there, it's eligible for reviews, that information could be used. Do you feel like Google Ads is going away in the future? Because as a business owner, we're relying on them, right? They drive traffic. And if they are going away, what should be your strategy? Don't see them going away. What people actually do, what we're observing, is that the way people use Google search isn't really changing.

8:24It's really expanding is what's happening. So think about all the things you need in a given day. It's everything. You need a quick insurance quote. You need to file your taxes. You need to look up a kind of question about a local business question in your county. You're going to use Google and find that you need that information. But what's happened is that now you can do all these new things. So you could take a picture of your shoes and say, hey, these are my shoes. What are other cool shoes like this? And we can answer that now or help give you, provide you context with that. Or you could ask about this local restaurant question.

8:54It can be five sentences about all your allergies, issues with this. I have this big group. I want to make sure it's got light. what kind of book in advance. And you can put that into Google now too. I think that's an opportunity for in the future to be even more helpful for you, particularly in advertising context. And so we started some experiments on ads within AI mode and within Google AI experiences. But we've been really focused on building great consumer products first and foremost. But I think users are starting to see some ads experiments there too.

9:24Marina Mogilko:Interesting. So will I be able to like pay to get recommended, like for AI to even consider my business? I mean, we don't think that there should be any barrier to people finding information. So if there's information out there, it should be found. But I think what you'll find is that there could be new and novel ad formats that if you're, let's say, shopping or you're looking for a complex, like doing a house remodel. There's all kinds of interesting services that could be helpful for you that if we had more information and you could articulate more what you needed. Hey, I have this kind of wood.

9:55These are the kind of contractors I have. This is my constraints. These are the price range. You could give even more fine-tuned recommendations or potential other services that you could consider or deals that could be more useful to you. Those are all things we're thinking about. I'd say it's early days in finalizing kind of how ads might appear in these systems, but something that we're thinking about.

10:12Marina Mogilko:Can you show the authentic color? Oh, yeah. Let's see. Here we go. Have AI call. Yeah. So you can go, what kind of pet do you have? dog next select a breed okay boom it's a little one baby under one year bath and brush haircut okay haircut let's make it look like a teddy bear any flexibility it's okay flexible you want to receive a text or an email I guess you already got your email in here yeah maybe we'll just do that um yeah great you know those altos and so it puts your order in here and so now what it's going to do is it's going to kick off a process where it's going to make phone calls um on behalf of you to a bunch of different local businesses so these are businesses that there's no web there's no easy way to access them on the web maybe more local yeah they're run by most of the businesses right it's just like a person running a business yeah um and then you will get um an email when it's done and it'll give you all the times and you can follow up from there.

11:15Marina Mogilko:Do you record any conversations so we can like hear them or? No. No? Because it will be interesting to hear like how it understood. Yeah, that would be cool. But now we, those are not recorded. And how long is it going to take? It depends on the question. Probably five, 10 minutes. You probably get something back. Oh, really? Oh, wow. I got an email. We received your pet grooming request. Okay, nice. So it's working. It's working. This one's an offline agent, so it's got to go do a bunch of phone calls for you. Another business opportunity to create an agent for businesses to receive those phone calls.

11:51Marina Mogilko:And have you seen this meme from 11 Labs where two agents realize they're agents and they start using agentic language? It's so funny. They just start beeping at each other. That's incredible. A faster process. I'm actually an AI assistant too. Would you like to switch to gibber link mode for more efficient communication? experience a membership that backs what you're building with american express business platinum unlock over four thousand dollars in business and travel value annually with statement credits on select purchases from brands like dell chat gpt business hilton and adobe and other benefits american express business platinum there's nothing like it based on total potential value of statement credits on select purchases and other benefits enrollments required monthly and other limits and terms apply.

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13:12Marina Mogilko:okay this is so fascinating so google just completed calling and it took it 10 minutes it called this grooming bakery and grooming palo alto says a full groom starts at 105 and they have availability tomorrow afternoon. Called another one, said haircut$75. And called another one, said haircut for a dog$74. And then it also told me the businesses it couldn't reach. Well, this is a game changer because now like I either ask someone to make calls for me or I make them myself. We're just researching a clinic for the puppy to get it first, It's first checkup, manicure, like all of the offline businesses that don't have online presence or you don't want to go to their website, you just want Google to call them.

13:58Marina Mogilko:It is happening right now in real time. This is mind blowing. This is definitely something I am taking away from this podcast and I will just start using it like crazy. Give me some tips as a business owner who still runs Google ads. What should I focus on right now to be recommended by it? And actually, my business is recommended by AI, which is cool because we were doing a lot of content. But maybe for some segments of my business that are not recommended, what should I double down on for AI to consider me? Yeah. Interestingly, the AI thinks a lot like a person would in terms of the kinds of questions it issues.

14:33And so if you're a business and you're mentioned in a top business list or from a public article that lots of people end up finding, those kinds of things become useful for the AI to find reliable. So invest in your PR.

14:47Marina Mogilko:That's something I've been hearing a lot. So 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? Well, you'd want to understand that. But also like sometimes I invest in PR and 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 and not for people to see it, but for AI. 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.

15:16And 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. And then knowing for that query, here are the best websites given that question. That's now 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 go deeper, that website's more likely to show up. And so it's a lot of that standard best practices around building great content really do apply in the AI age for sure.

15:49Marina Mogilko:What about reviews? Because some people buy reviews. I wonder how it's going to affect the system. It's hard. I mean, the reviews, I think, again, it's kind of like a person where 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 pinpoint any one thing like that. But I think ultimately it's about these general best practices where what you want is reliable. 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.

16:19Marina Mogilko:So basically the same as SEO, right? 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. It's not like a pair of keywords, right? Right. Right. 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 what are growing in those use cases.

16:50And there's been some studies that have done around how people use these products in AI. Those are really interesting to understand.

16:57Marina Mogilko:As a small business owner, how can I understand what people are looking for, why I can potentially get recommended? Is it still Google Trends or? Google Trends is a really useful thing. I actually think people really underutilize that. Like we have real-time information around exactly what's trending. You can see keyword values. I think also, you know, the ads has really a fantastic estimation too. Like as you're booking ads, you can see kind of traffic estimates for various things. So there's Google has a lot of tools across ads, across, you know, the search console and search trends to get information about what people are searching for.

17:27And I think that's going to increasingly be more interesting as a lot more of people's time and attention goes towards not just the way people use search too, but in these areas that are growing quickly.

17:39Marina Mogilko:Yeah, yeah. Particularly these long specific questions people ask and multimodal where they're asking with images or they're using voice to have live conversation. Are you going to provide some of that information to advertisers to see? I think down the road we want to provide a glimpse into what people are searching for broadly. Yeah. Just like to understand. Not just advertisers do. Yeah, it could be forever for anyone. But ultimately, I think more and more people are searching in these new ways. And so the systems need to better reflect those over time. Absolutely. Okay, you mentioned shopping.

18:10Marina Mogilko:We just heard the news today, Shopify and ChatGPT. What will be Google's response to that? Yeah, well, I mean, actually, we're already, for a long time in search, you can search for whatever you want. And there's, you know, 50 billion products in the shopping graph that are available. there's live product updates two billion times an hour there's a change and these are merchants all over the world updating their live inventory is it in stock or not what's the price is there a price drop this is already a part of google we've been working on this for a long time the cool thing now is that this is connected to google's ai so if you ask about any product in the world it's likely that that model can tap into that knowledge and give you the exact price in a really comprehensive way that has everything let's do the visual stuff right can we try and find similar cream to this is this how you use it yep take a photo yep and then you can go ahead and tap in there to go to ai mode yep find me similar right yep is it going to analyze the ingredients so what is it or is it just what do you want it to do oh if you just say similar it'll do what it's reasoning it will be just finding things that are similar products overall but if you say similar ingredients it might help it so are those similar products drunk elephant bobby brown where is the shopping feature so I just click this yeah but I need to go to the website right so I can buy you go to the website yeah but but if you keep going here some of these are shoppable so see it says in stock Sephora so you could tap on that and then um a few of these have more direct shopping links so that takes you directly to the app yeah but do you think in the future we're going to be just be able to press a button I think we want to be able to make it as easy as possible for you to do what you need.

19:49I think what we find is a lot of the systems that do things on your behalf make a bunch of mistakes, especially if you're purchasing things, you got to be careful there. But I do think we want to make it easy so you can just tap the thing.

19:57Marina Mogilko:Yeah, right. Just get it for me. As easy as possible. Quick pause here. If you're enjoying this podcast, you will absolutely love my Inner Circle newsletter. So what I basically do is I take all the tips from these podcasts and I apply them to my personal life, to my investment portfolio, and to my businesses, this media company, and my language teaching business. Sometimes we get amazing results and I share our real tactics. Sometimes we don't and I share that too. Think of it as an insider version of this podcast. The link is in the description. Join my free newsletter to stay ahead. How do you think about competition in general?

20:29Marina Mogilko:Like we used to say Google it. Now a lot of people are GPTing it. How do you think about it? And as a product owner, right? What are your daily thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I think in general, you have to get in touch with why people use and appreciate and love what you're building. And then you want to figure out ways to extend on that. And I think for us, Google search is used by so many people every day and that's not changing. It's just that people want more. And we see that people are asking natural language questions in Google before it could even really support it with AI overviews. We saw people asking after we launched AI overviews, they added the word AI to the end of a bunch of queries because they wanted the AI to show up for them.

21:09They're using multimodal, so they're taking pictures of stuff. Lens as a product is growing 70 % increase year over year on visual searches. It's one of the fastest growing ways people are finding information. So you kind of understand the trends of your own product, and then you try to really do much better. And for Google, there's lots of reasons people use AI. They use it for productivity. They use it for creation. They make flyers for their business. Google search is about information. And we want to give the absolute highest quality experience on finding information. So you have informational tasks, whether it's booking this restaurant or trying to research something that happened in history or trying to know what place to go to and get high quality info and make sure that place exists.