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Liz Reid on What Publishers Get Wrong About AI

June 26, 2026 · 50 min

Show notes

This week Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis sit down with Liz Reid, VP and Head of Google Search, for a wide-ranging conversation about AI's transformation of the search product billions of people use every day. Liz makes the case that personalization could actually help small publishers find their exact audience rather than making them invisible, explains what the "ignore" bug revealed about how AI Overviews work under the hood, and talks about why users are adapting to natural language search faster than Google expected.
Also in this episode: how preferred sources and subscriptions fit into AI search, Jeff challenges Liz on filter bubbles, and Liz's take on whether "search" is even the right word anymore. New episodes every Wednesday at aiinside.show.

Note: Time codes subject to change depending on dynamic ad insertion by the distributor.

CHAPTERS:

  • 0:00 - Start
  • 0:09:41 - Personalization is something no one else is asking about
  • 0:21:56 - Publisher concerns
  • 0:26:31 - How do publishers verify that personalization is finding them the right audience?
  • 0:28:33 - Filter bubbles
  • 0:32:04 - Searching with Agents: is there a new verb for search?
  • 0:35:57 - Liz's jobs, metrics, success, failure
  • 0:40:13 - Where were you when you found out that searching the word ‘ignore’ broke AI Overviews, and what was your first reaction?

Hosts: Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis Guest: Liz Reid

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