The New Sp[AI]ce Race

Summary

Voices of Search Podcast Summary: "The New Sp[AI]ce Race"

Release Date: June 19, 2025
Host: Jordan Cooney
Guest: Michelle Robbins, Manager of Strategic Initiatives and Intelligence at LinkedIn

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Introduction

In the episode titled "The New Sp[AI]ce Race," Jordan Cooney engages in an insightful conversation with Michelle Robbins from LinkedIn. They delve into the evolving landscape of search engine optimization (SEO) and the pivotal role of artificial intelligence (AI) in shaping how consumers discover information and content online.

The AI-Driven Evolution of Search

Michelle Robbins reflects on the longstanding relationship between AI and search, noting her early recognition of AI's potential impact on search dynamics back in 2014. She emphasizes the transformative shift from traditional SEO practices like link building and keyword stuffing to more sophisticated, AI-driven approaches.

“The days of links, link building, and keyword stuffing are going to come to an end sooner rather than later.” ([03:59])

Michelle highlights how Google's acquisition of DeepMind and the integration of AI into search results were natural progressions, albeit with challenges related to monetization and maintaining their advertising revenue streams.

Google's Strategic Approach to AI

The discussion pivots to Google's position in the AI race compared to other tech giants like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Facebook. Michelle suggests that while Google has robust AI models, their cautious and responsible rollout, coupled with their reliance on advertising revenue, may contribute to the perception that they are trailing behind competitors in public-facing AI applications.

“They are a business. They are not a public service. They believe they're a public good, but they're a business, you know, fundamentally.” ([09:35])

Michelle speculates that Google's meticulous approach to deploying AI ensures they maintain control and responsibility, especially given their global regulatory obligations.

Verticalization and Monetization Strategies

Jordan Cooney and Michelle Robbins explore the concept of verticalization—tailoring AI models to specific industries or functions. Michelle posits that companies like Perplexity and ChatGPT's partnerships with various sectors exemplify this trend, which may significantly influence scalability and growth.

Moreover, the conversation touches upon how verticalization affects monetization. Google faces the dilemma of integrating advanced AI without jeopardizing its ad-centric revenue model, especially when competing products like ChatGPT operate without ads.

Evolving Search Experiences with AI

The integration of AI into search is transforming user interactions. Michelle discusses the potential future of AI in search, likening it to the "Star Trek computer" vision of seamless technology integration. She contemplates various delivery methods, including on-device AI, browser integration, and embedding AI into everyday environments.

“It's really about technology delivery. I don't think it's as much as about building the technology.” ([16:18])

Michelle underscores the complexity of delivering AI-enhanced search experiences, highlighting the necessity of both superior AI models and effective product delivery mechanisms.

Communication and Transparency with the SEO Community

Michelle praises Google's efforts in communicating AI advancements to both the industry and the public. However, she critiques the unrealistic expectations held by the SEO community, which demands detailed explanations and operational impacts from every update.

“We have this wild expectation that there's been an update and we should be given every, every bit of information and even more...” ([19:37])

She advocates for diversifying audience acquisition strategies to mitigate over-reliance on Google, emphasizing the importance of brand building beyond a single platform.

Diversifying Audience Acquisition

The conversation highlights the risks associated with depending solely on Google for traffic and audience engagement. Michelle advises businesses to expand their presence across multiple platforms to safeguard against algorithm changes and to ensure sustained audience growth.

“If you have everything and if you've got a full circle and it's Google, you are in so much trouble.” ([20:13])

Future of Content Access in the Age of LLMs

As large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT become more prevalent, the episode explores how content accessibility might evolve. Michelle anticipates that publishers will increasingly require compensation for content used by AI models, altering the dynamics of content crawling and utilization.

“Publishers are going to have to get some understanding around the true value because I don't think it's going to be a world where everyone gets paid by Google to now enable their site to be crawled.” ([22:44])

She also notes that not all web content holds equal value, suggesting that Google can maintain its search efficacy even if some sites restrict AI access.

Conclusion

In "The New Sp[AI]ce Race," Jordan Cooney and Michelle Robbins provide a comprehensive analysis of the intersection between AI advancements and search engine optimization. They emphasize the necessity for businesses to adapt to AI-driven changes, diversify their audience acquisition strategies, and understand the shifting landscape of content accessibility. The episode underscores the critical balance between technological innovation and strategic monetization in maintaining a competitive edge in the ever-evolving world of SEO and content marketing.

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For more insights and to listen to the full episode, visit Voices of Search.

Transcript

[Jordan Cooney]

The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts. Sit back, relax, and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search podcast, Jordan Cooney.

Hello SEOs and marketers. My name is Jordan Cooney from Pre Visible. Joining me today is Michelle Robbins, who is the manager of Strategic initiatives and intelligence at LinkedIn.

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[Jordan Cooney]

Is a social networking platform dedicated to facilitating career development and networking opportunities. It offers a platform for individuals to showcase their skills and experience to potential employers. Today, Michelle and I are going to discuss the new space race. Okay, here's my conversation with Michelle Robbins from LinkedIn. Michelle, welcome to the Voice of Search podcast.

[Michelle Robbins]

Hey Jordan, thanks for having me.

[Jordan Cooney]

You're a repeat guest, so I like to honor a repeat guest. And so thank you for coming back to the show. Really appreciate that. You know, we're in the midst of a very exciting time for the search industry, there's a lot changing in terms of what's happening in what I like to call discovery, how consumers are Discovering Information content. LinkedIn is a pioneer in that, in terms of just the way their social network has helped tens of millions of people evolve their career and showcase their information and skills to various industries and verticals, but specifically to what's happening across all search experiences. AI is a key component to this race. AI is the driver of how companies like LinkedIn or Google or others are helping to evolve the way consumers find and access knowledge, information, content, products or services. So, Michelle, I'd love to get your perspective on where this, this race is going, what you've seen. You have a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience in the, in the space, not just SEO, but just generally how search has evolved and get your perspective on where the AI race is at and where, where we've come to at this point and where, where you over the next couple years.

[Michelle Robbins]

So it's interesting that question because the first time I started talking about AI and search was in 2014. I gave a presentation that essentially was kind of a heads up saying, all right, folks, this is coming. Google has bought DeepMind. Here's what DeepMind is. This is what this means. Get ready, look busy. Right? The days of like, you know, links link building and keyword stubbing and all the, all the spamming tech techniques are going to come to an end sooner rather than later. Everyone's like, ah, you're crazy, links will always matter and blah, blah, blah. And it was a pretty heated discussion. But that's when I started really following this space because I knew it was coming, right? All you had to do was follow the mergers and acquisitions that Google was doing in addition to following the evolution of AI itself, of what was happening and where they were focused on. So I am the least surprised person when ChatGPT came out and even the first versions that weren't the publicly available tool that everyone's using now. So when Google started injecting AI into the search results, it was very natural. I think it made sense. I think the challenge for them, for them is more of how do they continue to monetize, right? Because they are an ad company, they are an advertising company. That's where all of their money is made. And so there's a certain amount of real estate required to keep that engine going. And so I'm more interested in how they're going to evolve their ad products because I think that the evolution of their search itself is a given meaning. It's going to be more like your experience in Gemini, your experience in ChatGPT or Claude or, Or Perplexity, any of them. So I think that's more their challenge. And then keeping the SEOs and publishers from losing their minds in the meantime, that's a different group's challenge, though. The search team's challenge is putting out the best search products.

[Jordan Cooney]

True, true, true.

[Michelle Robbins]

While understanding that user behavior is fundamentally shifting and you have to go to where the users are, you have to meet the users where they are. And so I think there was a conference recently, like this week, where they were talking about anecdotal evidence and the assumption that people are using ChatGPT more than they're using Google, and that there's no big data evidence that supports that. I mean, we see them losing share.

[Jordan Cooney]

In search, market share. Yeah, right, yeah.

[Michelle Robbins]

But they're still the big dog, right? I mean, they're not sweating bullets yet.

[Jordan Cooney]

They still own 90% of the market.

[Michelle Robbins]

Yeah, they still own 90%, but these companies understand how quickly things change and how quickly consumer behavior changes. And so we need to not be thinking we don't believe this is a thing until it happens. We need to understand that this is the evolution that is happening and we have to be a part of it. And how do you continue to build your brand as the platforms you may have relied on for audience change?

[Jordan Cooney]

Correct. And I want to ask you about the evolution real quick, because this evolution, you saw this early, you know, over a decade ago, we've been going on this journey now. And what's really interesting over the last, I'd say three to four years is how Google has addressed it. Right. In particular, how Google has marketed themselves as an AI company. I'm using that as an overgeneralization. But to many spectators, not just in the industry, but even outside of the industry, the belief is that Google is falling behind. Right. And I totally agree on the market share pieces. But as we think about AI, is there a component of monetization, or is it a component of just Google's genuine care for humanity and fear of how AI will evolve? Or is there something else behind the way Google has approached this AI race compared to, say, OpenAI, compared to, say, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and the other large enterprises that are in the race? What's your perspective on Google's approach to AI? And it's not only the way they integrate it, but the way that they publicly address not just the SEO community, but the public at large.

[Michelle Robbins]

Okay, that's a lot of questions.

[Jordan Cooney]

It is it is.

[Michelle Robbins]

I'm going to kind of break that down. Let's break that down into the first one. So is your suggestion that Google's AI is not as capable as other AI, Is that the one question? And why is that?

[Jordan Cooney]

I mean, I think that that's. I think there's a belief in the market that Google's behind everybody else. I don't necessarily think that because they.

[Michelle Robbins]

Weren'T the first out the gate, or.

[Jordan Cooney]

At least the first, the first to make the splashy announcements.

[Michelle Robbins]

Right.

[Jordan Cooney]

And really kind of create a lot of hype behind public consumption of LLM models, although we all know that it was part of their technology far before that, but exactly.

[Michelle Robbins]

I mean, their is what drove the advancement that enabled ChatGPT to exist. Right. Like that came out of Google, that came out of Google's research. So I think that they have very good models, they probably have very capable models that they have not released. Because I think a number of things could be at play. This is all speculation.

[Jordan Cooney]

Sure.

[Michelle Robbins]

But I think that you have to consider, first of all, their responsibility as a large global corporation. And they are regulated. They're a regulated company. Right. So they have to be more careful about the things they put out into the public. And because of the scale at which they operate, they have to be extra careful. Right. So I would like to think that a lot of the reason why they didn't just throw something out there, even though they probably had it well before OpenAI did, was because they wanted to be responsible about it and thoughtful about it. And this gets to a different conversation about why the LLMs aren't great a lot of the time. Why we see the problems we see, and we see those across every model. There's no model that has solved the hallucination problem. I'd like to think that one, they're being more responsible. But then I'm also cognizant that their business model is selling advertising. And so you'll note you don't get ads in ChatGPT. So even if Google has a version of ChatGPT that outperforms it and would so much better, what does that do to their income stream to continue developing? Do you know what I mean?

[Jordan Cooney]

What's the ad benefit?

[Michelle Robbins]

Yeah, well, I mean, they're a business. They are a business. They are not a public service, they're a business. You know, they believe they're a public good, but they're a business, you know, fundamentally. And if they can't continue making money, they can continue developing incredible technology. So it's A bit of a chicken and egg thing. So I think that was probably at play as well. I also think that we don't know, you know, these are different teams within Google. They're not necessarily the same teams. Right. So you've got the teams working on the search engine and then you've got the research teams working on the AI and they're not necessarily the same teams. And in a large organization getting alignments across teams and getting and even just combining capabilities into a product, that's not a small undertaking.

[Jordan Cooney]

Right, true.

[Michelle Robbins]

ChatGPT could do what it did because it had, it started with nothing and it was like we're just going to be this interface, people are going to ask questions, we're going to answer them. That is not how Google's primary public facing product works.

[Jordan Cooney]

No question.

[Michelle Robbins]

So it's a lot more, I think it's more complicated. I don't think it's that they don't know what they're doing. I don't think that they don't have the capability. I just think they probably thought they didn't have to worry about the threats on the other sides or maybe they were caught unaware, maybe they didn't expect someone to release what was released. But that's my speculation.

[Jordan Cooney]

Or at least the pace by which I think the general public, not the technology segment, but just the general public I think adopted the utility of AI and started making it a mainstream use of their everyday behavior or work product. Right. And we're seeing that more and more with many of these LLM models. The verticalization of many of these companies, whether it be perplexity in a bunch of financial institutions and partnerships they've done, or even ChatGPT now partnering with governments. There's clearly an appetite for these organizations to foster a verticalized approach which traditionally has been how Google has faced threats. Right. It's more people are searching in YouTube than they are in Google for video based content. More people are searching Amazon for products that than they are in Google for product based related queries. And so that's been an interesting viewpoint I think that I've heard in a lot of other episodes which is the verticalization of LLM models may have a material impact to how they scale and grow. Speaking of scaling and growing, how do you see Google specifically continuing to invest in the future of AI? Where do you see their efforts going as you look at the landscape? I mean you've had this view of where it was and have been kind of watching it evolve over the last.

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[Jordan Cooney]

Do you think they're going to make it more, more of a baseline service that is accessible to developers, to the general tech or SEO community, or do you think it's going to be continuously something that's part of their core products and where their products go?

[Michelle Robbins]

I think that they will, as the other model developers have done, the other foundation frontier model developers have done, will continue to push forward on improving their core model. So they've got Gemini and their other smaller models and feature specific parts of what Gemini can do. I think they're going to continue to develop that. I think that's a different stream from what they're going to do with search and how they envision the future of search. I honestly, I don't think I have a guess at that because 14 years ago I was like, they've never made it a secret that their goal as a company was to create the Star Trek computer. Right. And the Star Trek computer is pretty much what we're seeing now, except for it's not part of our environment and the way it was an environmental component of the ship.

[Jordan Cooney]

Sure.

[Michelle Robbins]

So how do you take this technology and make it just a seamless core part of everyone's environment? Right. Is that going to be on device? Is that going to be in a browser? Is that going to be just embedded throughout new home building? I mean, you can think of it in a lot of different ways, right? Like, how are you going to deliver this? Because it's really about technology delivery. I don't think it's as much as about building the technology. I think they're going to continue building this technology, how it gets delivered to consumers and what that interaction is. And then how do they monetize that? Right. How does that become a business for them? I think that's the challenge, but I think that's a challenge for all of the services. Right. You know, you've got meta doing everything it's doing with Llama and embedding, you know, that they're, you know, across all of their services. That's the same problem though, because if people move away from using those interfaces, right? So like, if you close your Facebook Instagram threads, shut it down, I don't want anything to do with Meta anymore. They're not the good guys, you know, whatever you might think, right. If you, if they start losing people using those interfaces, then does it matter if they've got the best model?

[Jordan Cooney]

True.

[Michelle Robbins]

So it's almost like it's two things. You have to have the best model and you have to have the best delivery of product. I don't think it's one or the other.

[Jordan Cooney]

Yeah. And for, for a long time, right, Google's been the best delivery of product when it comes to search, right?

[Michelle Robbins]

Correct.

[Jordan Cooney]

And I think that's where they not only pioneered in vertical, whether it be in shopping ads and doing stuff in shopping, how they've integrated different experiences all the way back to like just even introducing the knowledge graph and how they consumed Wikipedia information to the serve. Right. But on that point of an evolving product in search, I am curious to get your view on how Google might be evolving their own search experience using AI. And do you think that they're going to continue to be as, say, public or open about changes and improvements? You know, we're in the middle of a core update right now when we're recording, and AI is going to become more and more and more part of the search experience? I'm assuming you're going to agree on that piece. Will they change the way they communicate about that? Will they change the way that they share information and guidelines about what those AI experiences might be? I mean, today, now, they're called AI overviews, and who knows what it'll be six months from now? Just curious to get your perspective on both that evolution as well as how they're going to communicate it.

[Michelle Robbins]

So I think they've always been, I honestly think they've always over communicated with the industry and the public. I don't think there's a company that communicates as much about what they're doing and how things are changing than Google. I think that they are really good about communicating and interacting with the industries that not only provide their content. Right. The publishers, all of the companies that make their information available to searchers, but also with the webmasters and search engine optimization community, I think they've over communicated. I don't think everyone's been happy about what they communicate because I also think the industry has this wild expectation that they deserve these answers. Right.

[Jordan Cooney]

Yeah.

[Michelle Robbins]

This changed. I would like to know why, how and what I can do to mitigate against it. And those are things we would never expect from another company. Right. I have roombas and roombas get updated frequently and I don't know what that means. Right. Does the Roomba still work? It still works. I don't expect that I'm going to get on the phone with a comms person at the Roomba Corporation, iRobot, whoever and be like, I'd like you to explain to me in specific detail what these updates were and how this might impact how the Roomba operates on my floor in particular.

[Jordan Cooney]

Right.

[Michelle Robbins]

We would never expect that from another corporation. And so we have this wild expectation that there's been an update and we should be given every, every bit of information and even more to that, that we should understand operationally how they, how they function, you know, how they've changed it, what they're changing, how it impacts this vertical, that vertical, this. That's ridiculous. Right. It's like they don't owe us anything, you know, they don't owe you traffic. And while I feel for companies who have been able to develop businesses and acquire audiences exclusively through Google, if that was your business plan, you never had a business.

[Jordan Cooney]

Right?

[Michelle Robbins]

Right. And I've been saying this forever. It's like you have to. Do you want to diversify your pie of audience acquisition? If you've got everything and if you've got a full circle and it's Google, you are in so much trouble. But let's say you've got a half Google and half Facebook, you're still in so much trouble. Right. You have to do the work of understanding where your audience is, what your audience likes that's adjacent to the product that you serve, service. Right. And start meeting them in those other places. And that's hard work. And it's called building a brand. And people did it for a decade before Google ever came on the scene and they should have continued doing it. I think we got lazy. I think we thought digital was some new shiny kingdom that would make everything different and less expensive when it comes to building a brand. And it's not. It's still a lot of hard work.

[Jordan Cooney]

So, last question as we close this episode and get into tomorrow's episode, right, Tomorrow's episode is about why LLMs fail and why we need AI alignment. But I'm curious as we segue to that, you know the backbone of both Google search and LLMs is the ability to access all this information that's on the web, right? This available, I'm not going to call it public, I'm not going to call it free, but all this available content that's in the web, we've already seen some companies like Reddit and others publicly come out and say, hey, you can use this content, but you're going to have to pay for it. Is that going to be something that changes as LLMs and AI experiences become more prolific? And is Google going to have to change their expectation that they can just crawl and access basically anything on the web for next to nothing as this change occurs over the next year or two with the utility of LLM models and their access to this content?

[Michelle Robbins]

I would say that, yeah, models will change. There are organizations and publishers that will be able to say you're going to need to pay us for this content. But I think that people need to understand that all content is not created equally and all content is not valuable. So just because Google crawls your content doesn't mean your content is the most valuable thing that they have crawled. And Google has already crawled everyone's content. And new content being made that is most important for these models is news content. And because it's new, new information as well as, I mean the Reddit thing makes complete sense because that's user generated content. That's people coming in, giving fresh perspectives or even just repeating the same old thing that, you know, further embeds. This is what the same old thing should be described as, that kind of thing. So I think the publishers are going to have to get some understanding around the true value because I don't think it's going to be a world where everyone gets paid by Google to now enable their site to be crawled. I think Google could at this point take a pass on a lot of sites and not be any less effective or efficient as a search engine as a result.

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[Jordan Cooney]

And that's a great place for us to wrap up this episode of the Voice of the Search Podcast. Thank you to Michelle Robbins from LinkedIn for joining us in part two of this interview, which we'll publish tomorrow, Michelle and I are going to discuss why LLMs fail and why AI alignment is needed. If you can't wait until our next episode and would like to learn more about Michelle, you can find a link to her LinkedIn profile in our show notes or visit our company website LinkedIn.com.

[Ben Shab]

Okay, thanks to Jordan Cooney, the founder of Pre Visible. If you'd like to get in touch with Jordan, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes. You can contact him on Twitter. His handle is jtkooney. That's J T K O E N E. Or you can visit his company's website, which is Previsible IO that's P R E V I S I B L E I O. Just one more link in our show notes I'd like to tell you about. If you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast, head over to voicesofsearch.com where we have summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter and you can even send us your topic suggestions or your marketing questions, which we'll answer live on our show. Of course, you can always reach out on social media. Our handle is voicesofsearch on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or you can contact me directly. My handle is Benjayshab B E N J S H A B and if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing insights in your podcast feed. We're going to publish an episode every day during the work week, so hit that subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today. But until next time, remember the answers.

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