What every Marketer needs to know about the future of search - Google’s Sophie Neary

Jon Evans (0:00)

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. This episode is an advertisement feature brought to you by Google. Today, I'm joined by a returning guest, none other than the fabulous Sophie Neary from Google. Now, as many of you know, search has changed more dramatically in the past year than it has in the past 20 With AI Search taking over how many people are discovering new products. So today, I'm joined by Sophie to talk about what that means for marketing, what Google are doing about it, and how you can take advantage of all those changes.

Sophie is, as always, absolutely fabulous and full of great insight. You'll enjoy this one. So without further ado, let's get into it.

Sophie, it's great to have you back on the show.

Sophie Neary (1:27)

What a pleasure it is to be here, two and a half years later, I think.

Jon Evans (1:31)

Yes, I know.

Time's flown, I have to say. But in honor of you, anyone listening won't realize, anyone watching, I've changed my t-shirt just for you. There we go. So anyone who knows Sophie will know you love pink. I do. For one day only, the black t-shirts become pink.

Sophie Neary (1:47)

And I've almost let my side down, but you can't see but actually down the side of my jeans, I have pink stripes.

Jon Evans (1:51)

You do. There we go. So very on brand. So when you spoke to me last time, I think you just joined Google.

I'd love to know what's happened in the last couple of years, and particularly maybe what have you learned on your journey in the last couple of years?

Sophie Neary (2:04)

Oh, blimey. It's almost like what hasn't happened in the last two and a half years, isn't it? It's been the most incredible, incredible learning journey. There's that great phase, change has never happened so fast, we'll never be this slow again. I don't think that's ever been more true than now. And when I joined, all of the headlines were, AI is going to be the Google Search killer. There was this Gartner report that came out that said, large language models will mean that Google Search will decline by 25% in 2026

And what I really love is that at the end of 2026, Sundar, our CEO, came out and said, we've just had the biggest quarter ever of people using Google Search.

So it didn't decline, it got bigger and better, and people use it even more because guess what? It was our friend Mark Ritzen would say the most important product. When you make the product, Google Search, when you make things easier to find and buy and discover and answer questions, people use it more. And it's just been the most incredible journey from when I joined, Search was very much words in a box. And now, well, I think you heard me when I came in today, I don't even type into the Google box anymore. I just speak and Google answers my searches for me.

Jon Evans (3:24)

This is true. So for the listeners, Sophie walked into the studio, literally dictating some quite detailed instructions about a rental as well, weren't you, as you're walking in, and it produced an email for you, sent it to the right people and off you go. Yeah. Very impressive.

Sophie Neary (3:36)

A great time saver.

Jon Evans (3:38)

Yes. I need to learn from this, by the way. This sounds amazing. Given what you know now, right, if you put your hat back on, so you used to be, for example, running marketing at Boots, didn't you, before?

Sophie Neary (3:47)

Yeah, boots.com.

Jon Evans (3:48)

What have you learnt now? You've been at Google, you've got the inside track on an amazing technology, an amazing company doing great things. What do you know now that you wish you knew then, in terms of you put your marketing hats back on from where you were?

Sophie Neary (4:02)