Google’s Liz Reid: The real search shift is behavioral, not AI

AI Overviews are changing what it means to “search.” The web remains central, but AI and shifting user habits are creating new winners and losers – with forums, videos, and creators gaining ground on traditional publishers, said Google’s Search Head Liz Reid in a new interview.

Search shake-up. Every ranking update creates “winners and losers,” Reid acknowledged. But she said user behavior – not just algorithms – is driving the shift, with younger audiences favoring forums, short-form video, and creator content over traditional publishers.

• “One of the things that’s always true about Google Search is that you make changes and there are winners and losers. That’s true on any ranking update. That doesn’t, in any way, discount what it means for those individual publishers that are losers.
• “But the other thing that’s going on is there’s a behavioral shift that is happening in conjunction with the move to AI, and that is a shift of who people are going to for a set of questions. And they are going to short-form video. They are going to forums. They are going to user-generated content a lot more than traditional sites. This is particularly true with younger users. They’re going to podcasts rather than reading a long article.”
• “We do everything from user research to we run an experiment. And so you take feedback from what you hear from research about what users want, you then test it out, and then you see how users actually act, and then, based on how users act, the system then starts to learn and adjust as well.”

Supporting the open web. “We really care about the health of the web more than anybody else. It is essential, not simply for AI Overviews, but for the product,” Reid said. She pointed to inline links, videos, and personalization features that highlight trusted publishers.

• Yes, but. Those links now sit inside AI Overviews – within or beneath Google’s own AI-generated summaries.

“Dead Internet” worries. Reid dismissed fears that AI-generated content will drown out real people, saying Google’s systems downrank spam and extremely low-value AI slop.

• Yes, but. As AI floods the web with content, Google becomes the filter that controls which human voices break through.

Quality signals in the AI era. Google wants to reward content that shows time, craft, expertise, and perspective, not mass-produced fluff. Reid said users prefer “deeper, richer” content that feels human. One thing they are looking at is whether a page gets fewer “bounce clicks.”

• Yes, but. Who decides what’s “rich”? With fewer clicks going to websites from AI Overviews, Google’s algorithmic judgments will matter more than ever.

Richer, more personal queries. Reid says AI lets people search in more nuanced ways (“instead of ‘I want a dress for the wedding,’ ‘I want a dress for the wedding that is made by a merchant with the following values, and is also red, and is short’”) – helping smaller merchants and creators surface.

• Yes, but. While that personalization could reward niche voices, it could further concentrate visibility among those who align with Google’s machine understanding of “relevance.”

Chat isn’t the whole future. Reid said AI won’t replace Search – it will enhance it. “People still want to hear from other people,” she said.

• Yes, but. Again, Google is blending summaries, citations, and mentions – and AI ultimately decides which people get heard and even who gets credit for an answer.

Why we care. Google’s AI Overviews are reshaping how people find information and who gets traffic. Although Reid insists the web stays central, in the future Google’s AI summaries will likely reduce more clicks and force publishers to fight for visibility inside Google’s answers.

The interview. The Google Exec Reinventing Search in the AI Era | WSJ’s Bold Names