AI-Powered Search: Disruptive Risk or Strategic Advantage?
episode
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
40 min
2 speakers
3 chapters
transcribed 29 days ago
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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.
AI-powered search is shaking up the digital world. Google's business model is under pressure. Advertisers are rethinking their strategies, publishers fear traffic loss, and competitors are racing to capitalize on the disruption. According to a 2025 report by GitNux, 64% of marketers consider AI a critical component of their SEO strategy. Additionally, 73% of SEO experts believe AI will significantly change the SEO landscape within the next five years. That's not a prediction. It's a reality quickly coming true. And now Google faces a delicate balancing act. Innovate with AI or risk market share loss. For businesses, the challenge is clear. How do you stay discoverable in a search landscape driven by AI innovation?
This is the Voices of Search podcast. I'm Jordan Cooney, and joining us today is Mike Walroth, CEO at Yext, which helps businesses improve their digital presence through innovative search solutions. Today, Mike will share how companies can navigate AI-powered search while maintaining discoverability. Mike, welcome to the Voice of the Search podcast. Hey,
Jordan. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Yeah. So thrilled to have you on the show. For listeners that don't know much about Yext, why don't you just share a little bit about the company, what you guys do, how you guys offer solutions in the market, and then we can dive into some of our questions.
Yeah, sure. Great. So Yext, the best way to describe Yext is we're a digital presence platform. We help companies maintain and optimize their digital presence using a suite of products that range from listings, data syndication, reputation management, website pages, landing pages, social media management, and increasingly one-to-one communications, primarily through, today, the financial services vertical, although I think there's a lot of opportunity outside of that vertical. And look, the best thing to know about Yext is we've been at the forefront of helping businesses manage what happens when landscapes of digital presence fragment. Since the mobile device fragmented the digital experience layer very meaningfully in kind of the late 2008, 2009 timeframe.
And we also have a lot of experience with what happens when markets defragment, which is kind of the situation we've had for the last, call it, decade or 12 or so years. So we went from a highly fragmented environment to a highly monolithic environment where Google became sort of the center of everything. And I think what we're seeing now is a much more rapid than expected refragmentation being driven by generative AI and the promise of that as the search technology of the future.
Well, that's a great segue to our first deep dive question, which is around kind of the AI search evolution, like in what's happening, right? And whether how Yext can help or just what's happening generally in the landscape. What risks and opportunities does this changing search landscape powered by AI bring to Google's business model? So how's Google's business model at the center of this whole AI change?
Yeah, I mean, so I have an interesting lens on this, which I'm happy to share. So my first company was a company called Right Media. It was a digital ad exchange. It was the first sort of at scale digital ad exchange. I sold that company to Yahoo in 2007. And I joined Yahoo at that time running initially the display advertising exchange and was quickly asked to take over oversight of the search advertising marketplace as well.
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