Nick Fox, Google’s VP of Search, recently sat down with Jason Howell on his AI Inside podcast to offer a rare inside look at how Google is reimagining search through the lens of artificial intelligence. 

As AI Overviews roll out more widely and publishers raise pressing concerns about web traffic, Fox’s comments provide clarity on Google’s goals, guiding principles, and what lies ahead for both content creators and search users.

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Here’s a breakdown of what matters most from that conversation—and what SEOs and digital marketers should take away.

Authority Still Matters: AI Builds on 25 Years of Web Understanding

Google Exec Challenges Publisher Panic: Is AI Really Cutting Your Clicks?

According to Nick Fox who took over as the VP of Search and Ads in October 2024 replacing Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s AI experience is not rewriting the playbook—it’s building on it. 

He emphasized that the backbone of AI Overviews and Search Generative Experience (SGE) is Google’s long-standing expertise in understanding the web.

“Web ranking, quality of sites, relevance to the query, authority—these are things we’ve spent enormous engineering hours on,” said Fox.

AI responses are not generated in isolation. They rely heavily on Google’s index, quality signals, and Knowledge Graph. 

That means core SEO fundamentals—building trustworthy, authoritative content and high-quality backlinks—are more important than ever, even in an AI-driven search experience.

What Determines the Links Shown in AI Overviews?

Fox addressed a growing curiosity: how are the links selected in the AI Overview “cards” that appear to the right or below the AI answer?

While he didn’t disclose a new ranking algorithm, he made it clear that the AI doesn’t invent its own notion of trust. 

Instead, it references the same authority, relevance, and ranking logic that fuels traditional organic search, but adds an extra layer of reasoning using large language models.

This highlights the need for brands and publishers to continue optimizing for topical authority and semantic relevance—because the content surfaced in AI is still based on the web Google already knows and trusts.

Publisher Fears vs Google’s Data: Is AI Killing the Web?

It’s no secret that many publishers are worried. If AI answers a query directly on the SERP, why would anyone click?

Fox acknowledged the concern, but pushed back on the narrative. 

He pointed out that many of the traffic loss studies being cited are methodologically flawed—some even looked at traffic changes before AI Overviews were publicly available.

More importantly, Google sees this moment as expansionary, not zero-sum.

“The web is thriving. The number of new pages we saw in April 2025 was up 45% compared to April 2023,” Fox said, citing internal crawler data.

He also mentioned that user visits to the web are rising year-over-year, and that AI-generated summaries are unlikely to replace in-depth articles, human storytelling, or detailed research. In his view, AI helps people do more—not less—with the web.

The Hybrid Future: AI + Human-Created Content

Fox underscored a key belief: the future of Search is not about AI replacing human content, but about AI enhancing how users access and interact with it.

Some of the web’s growth, he admitted, is AI-generated—but he sees that as a reflection of the evolving web, not a dilution of its value. Google’s job remains the same: help users separate the helpful from the unhelpful.

For SEOs, this means structuring content for humans but ensuring it can also be parsed, summarized, and linked by AI models. 

Clear headings, schema markup, and concise but informative content can help brands remain visible in both organic listings and AI-generated summaries.

What This Means for SEOs and Website Owners

If you’re working in SEO, here’s the bottom line: AI isn’t the end of Search—it’s an evolution of it. 

And many of the strategies that worked in classic SEO will continue to work in the AI era, provided they’re applied with even more attention to quality, trust, and structure.

At Stan Ventures, we’re already helping clients adapt to this shift by:

• Focusing on topical authority and EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).
• Creating content clusters that answer user intent fully—so even partial AI summaries point users back to your site.
• Building high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites that reinforce brand trust.
• Monitoring visibility in AI Overviews and optimizing pages that are frequently referenced by Google’s generative summaries.

Fox’s message was clear: AI in Search is not here to shut out creators—it’s here to organize and elevate quality content. The web isn’t shrinking. It’s expanding. And Google Search, with AI at its core, is evolving to keep pace.

For those of us in the SEO industry, this isn’t a time to panic. It’s a time to pivot—smartly, strategically, and with confidence in what continues to work.

If you’re unsure where your brand stands in this new AI-powered search world, Stan Ventures is here to help. Let’s optimize not just for the SERPs of today, but for the search experiences of tomorrow. Book a Call with us today