In this episode of The Visibility Brief, Yext SVP of Marketing Rebecca Colwell is joined by Heather Physioc, Chief Discoverability Officer at VML, for a conversation about how search has expanded far beyond Google — and why brands must rethink what discoverability really means.
For years, "search" was shorthand for one thing: Google and the ten blue links. But today, consumers move fluidly between social platforms, retail sites, video search, maps, and AI search depending on what they're trying to accomplish. So what does it mean to show up consistently when discovery no longer happens in one predictable place?
Drawing on her journalism background and years leading cross-channel search strategy, Heather reframes SEO as something broader and more human: the practice of meeting real human needs – wherever and however they surface.
The episode breaks down:
Why brands must move beyond optimizing for a single engine
How consumer intent changes depending on context
How LLMs handle complex queries better than traditional search
Why trust is becoming the real competitive edge
How structured data and consistency matter more than ever
How to rethink measurement in a world where discovery is fragmented
If you're a marketing leader navigating a world where search happens everywhere (not just in a browser), this episode will help you rethink how your brand connects with customers across today's search journey.
Episode Links
Transcript
00:00:00.040 — 00:00:36.360 The race to dominate. Ln search is heating up and the winner will be the one that earns the trust of the user. Who better to talk about trust than a journalist turned marketer? Heather Physiogel leads Global search at VRML, one of the world's most respected marketing and creative agencies. With a career that spans the rise of desktop search, social, mobile and now AI. Heather has navigated multiple shifts in how people find information. Today, we explore how people search across an expanding landscape of platforms and why they're turning to AI. Let's get into it.
00:00:44.040 — 00:01:26.980 Hi, Heather, welcome to The Visibility Brief. Thanks so much for having me. Excited for our conversation. I've really been looking forward to this. So you lead discoverability at VML. Um, you've got organic, paid retail, local. It's huge remit. So I'm really curious, as we kick off, when you describe your job to a CMO and then maybe your mom or someone who doesn't know what you do. How do you describe what you do and what you're responsible for? For solving zoom out. I immediately zoom out because I want to change the idea that search is just Google, just websites, just SEO. Um, but rather that discoverability is this broader ecosystem
00:01:28.020 — 00:02:24.600 that is part of someone's search journey where they are going to look for information in all sorts of places. They're going to try to complete tasks using all sorts of tools. And so when I describe, uh, my work to my grandmother or my, my CMOs, it's really I exist to help brands connect with their customers no matter when, where, why or how those people search. That's my job is to bridge that gap, is to understand that human need, help these brands understand those human needs and then be better able to serve those human needs. I love that approach so much. I think a lot of CEOs can get really technical, and I really appreciate that you are approaching it from the lens of the customer journey and what they're trying to accomplish. I think I've heard you refer to it as jobs to be done in the past, which I love as a product marketer. Um, you acknowledge the human behind the search. I'd love to start there. Sure. When someone initiates a search,
00:02:25.760 — 00:07:46.820 what are they trying to do? That's a great question. And that's the whole point is for us to figure that out, right? Uh, you know, people turn to search for all sorts of stuff. It's to find information. It's to seek entertainment, reassurance, um, insight, motivation. They need to complete a task, go somewhere, do something, buy something. It's just this ultimate portal to everything on the web. So search is the first step in that journey. So I just like to understand all the different nuanced ways that people are using different search tools at different parts of their thought process. So that human centric aspect of it is what I like most about this, this work. Technical is fun and all, but really the thing I value most is that deeper dive into the human mind and then the ability to use that information to actually craft a better world, or a better experience that enables me to serve those people. Service is kind of a core value, so search marketing just feels like the most aligned area. Do you find that people turned to turn to different channels for different search needs? Absolutely. So what we're seeing, we're talking a lot more about social search, traditional organic search, video search, retail search. We're just kind of segmenting things a lot. And that can actually sound super fragmented at first. But really it's an exercise in bringing things together. We've always talked about these channels as separate things social search, commerce, etc. but the reality is they are inextricably intertwined and search makes that possible. And now this evolving AI search functionality makes this possible. So yeah, people are constantly weaving in and out of different platforms when they're conducting searches because different platforms are better suited to different tasks.
So earlier we talked about wanting to go somewhere, do something, buy something. Those three things are very different functions. They all start with a search. And that's the part that we as search experts understand and work with. But they need to be rooted to somewhere different today based on what those technologies can do and the experiences or information they can return. So yeah, we see a lot more of that inspirational entertainment, higher funnel if you will search happening in things like social and video search. Whereas that messy mid funnel where people are doing a lot of contextual research, um, processing of information, going through the really nuanced, personalized questions to figure out Which answer is right for them or which product is right for them. That's probably happening in traditional search and AI search platforms, because that's the best use case for an AI search platform, whereas someone who needs to take an action, like to go to a business, might be using maps or GPS type search, or someone who needs to buy something, maybe using a retailer search. So now we're in the lower funnel. So when we just look at Google and we just look at websites, we're looking at one tiny fraction of that whole connected search journey. Does that make sense? Absolutely, absolutely. I think about my mindset when I am scrolling Instagram, and it's this passive discovery kind of process that might then spur me to say, oh, that's a really interesting brand or idea. And then I may go to a different channel like Google to find our website, learn more about them. I want to talk more about that discovery journey when I'm in worker research mode. So historically most of us have done this research on Google. I get ten blue links I am exploring. I've got dozens of tabs now open on my browser and I'm trying to find the information and we are now seeing, you know, users are flocking to AI at a record pace. And I'm curious, is this because AI search is fulfilling a need that Google or traditional search was not was not doing for us?
Definitely, definitely. So if we look at the arc of history. So I've been working in search since about 2008, which is roughly about the time Google was becoming the biggest website on Earth. And this is the nascent time in search. And so they're still very much evolving rapidly at this time to even establish how they're going to decide what shows up. And so the web economy has led all of these different channels and types of content and opportunities and whatever to flock to the web. And so now it's just inundated with stuff that humans have to sift through to find the things that they need. And search does certainly start that process, but it is not the finish to that process. And so there it's gotten so fragmented. There are so many platforms and so many places to find information that it's really chaotic in the human mind to have to do a search, try to learn and collect information, contextualize it in your brain, back out, do the next search, do the same thing back out, do the next search, do the same thing, and then all the while, trying to piece all this information together into some whole action or answer. And remember, like, where did that piece of information come from? I saw something really cool over there, like, yeah, that's a lot. Where'd it go? Where'd it go? I don't know, it's just a lot of time. It's a lot of energy. It's a lot of mental bandwidth that is in increasingly,
00:07:48.060 — 00:08:29.760 increasingly short supply for people. So yeah, there's this chaotic fragmentation that happened. And at a time when the world is craving some sanity and some simplification, AI search comes along at the perfect time to say, oh, don't worry, I'll go do all that searching and exploration for you. Give me all your questions at once and leave it with me. I will go research this information and return this report exactly how you tell me to. Yeah, that's a great service to do. Fragment and centralize and get people to those answers faster. Are you finding there are certain types of queries that are
00:08:30.960 — 00:11:34.180 being, um, more rapidly adopted in AI search, certain types of questions that people are going to because because of this sense of relief or deep research that the AI is doing on our behalf. Yeah, yeah, there's a few patterns I'm noticing for sure. And that messy middle really is the best use case for AI's capabilities, the multiple searches that warrants the synthesis and the ability to go back and forth with it to refine. That is something Search engine simply could not do, right? So the kinds of questions that I am seeing people turn to AI, LMS search platforms for most often are not like the factual basic information queries. It's often things like how to or process queries where answers weren't readily available or really detailed, personally, contextually relevant searches for shopping and research type stuff. So not just I want to plan a trip to Oaxaca, right? I want to plan a trip to Oaxaca that involves tequila and mezcal and bats and agave. And I am a vegetarian and so I can't eat meat. I really prefer coffee shops in the morning. Whatever. I can give it all these criteria. It can go do a ton of that heavy lifting for me. I'm also thinking about, um, explainers. Uh, because I was looking at an outdoor gear brand and looking at how they showed up versus their competitors in the film searches and what kinds of queries were showing up. Most often that didn't necessarily show up most often in my Google search results. And it was like the materials that the backpacks are made out of and which one is best. If I'm backpacking 2000 miles versus which one is fine if I'm car camping, you know, it was these really detailed long tail interests or needs that were showing up most in the AI search platforms. It's interesting, if I were to go to Google and say, you know, backpack, but I'm going to hike the PCT, I don't need a back to school backpack. Or like you said, the car camping backpack, like September and going to kindergarten. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I'm also, you know, five one. So it needs to fit my frame and it needs to be really lightweight because I might be hiking for miles and miles.
Yeah, llms are fascinating for that. I want to talk about the pivot that we need to make as marketers to address this, because as a consumer, I love this shift. But as a marketer, to get in front of, to be visible in these searches, what do I need to do differently? It's hard for a lot of people to process because it feels like a threat at first. It's like taking away traffic, taking my traffic, but it does also present this wealth of new and different opportunities to connect with customers. I think if done well, maybe if done well. And by that I mean look at all these new, deeper,
00:11:35.260 — 00:18:13.000 more specific needs that people are searching for, these problems that they are trying to solve, that we couldn't see before because we were so focused in the short tail or the most volume, most demand, not the, you know, most specific things we could help people with. So it's just pulled back this layer that allows us to see deeper into these customer needs. What a blessing, what an opportunity to go in and serve people better. Um, so yeah, the pivot, I guess, isn't so much a pivot. It's more like, go deeper, go further. You've talked about making channels connected and more holistic. Now go actually do the thing you talk about really understanding your customer. Well prove it. Go deeper and look at the needs that nobody has been addressing for years and years, because they just didn't surface to the top ten results of Google. That's what's different. So if I'm Ray, which I is one of my favorite local brands, I love Ray because I can go in and personally talk to someone and say, I'm preparing to hike the PCT, I'm looking for the right backpack for me. Um, and there's an expert there who's going to get all the context and answer that question. I now turn to the LM to have that conversation. Ray needs to be answering that question in some way. Right. So is that theory right? Right.
Yeah, I would I would hope Ray goes okay. These are the kinds of questions my customers really ask me in the store. They're clearly interested in this kind of information. They probably searched online first and couldn't get the answer as directly or as clearly as they wanted. So they go talk to the human, so now they can at least do a huge amount of that heavy lifting in AI, lm first, and then go talk to a human and maybe have them validate that information. For better or worse, I suspect that's what's happening with medical information right now major purchases, etc.. Absolutely. My money or my life. Those are kind of the two big categories where people are seems like turning to the lens. I think it all comes back to trust. Right. I need to trust that this information is correct. And as brands. You know, we focus a lot on building trust with people. I'd love to hear more about your perspective on if that is changing. Now, if the way we build trust is changing because we're now trying to build trust with an LM versus an individual. Actually, I think in some ways it's changing. In some ways it's changing. But what I think is really interesting is it's actually kind of getting back to its core.
So about 20 years ago, if that maybe 15, um, Google, Google search results were flooded with pretty junky content. We were all kind of out there doing the same stuff. It was hard to tell one from the other. One wasn't really better. That wasn't a great environment where people want to continue using Google. So they started to prioritize and reward signals of trust, credibility, accuracy, authority. Like if people are getting bad results, junky results and accurate results are not going to keep coming back. Therefore, we need to prioritize true stuff. And so they started looking for technical signals or concrete signals of credibility, authority, trust, humanity. And that's what we started to lean into. We started to prioritize better practices there, at least for that period of time. And all the other platforms in search engines certainly chase Google's progress and development. Now we are seeing the same thing. So the internet is being flooded with this wave of junk from AI generated content and everybody trying to optimize for geo. And now everyone heard Reddit is a big sort. The web is just getting flooded all over again. We saw this happen before and people know shoppers, searchers. They know that they cannot trust the information they are getting out of these AI search platforms today. They're using it anyway, but they know they can't fully trust it. And you can see people starting to develop preferences for one or the other platform, like right. This week I'm hearing a ton about Claude. Last week I was hearing a ton about ChatGPT, but they're starting to align to ones that they trust more. I'm hearing this on the ground physically talking to humans. That is the next big frontier of the AI search wars. Mark my words, that is the next big thing, because the one that people can count on and trust to give them a better experience and better information, we know for a fact, is the one that people are going to migrate to and use more. So these platforms have every incentive to compete on accuracy. And I do believe the one that gets that right. We'll take the lion's share of this on the way out. I couldn't agree more. I think that's absolutely spot on. What are they doing to ensure the accuracy of the information? You talked about what Google had had done 15 years ago. What are Claude and ChatGPT doing? Yeah. Great question. I don't know that they're doing anything yet, but I think the things that they will do will start to look a lot like the stuff we saw in the Google era, different, but the same thinking.
And I actually come back to my journalism roots for this. Like how do we vet sources? How do we find and vet information? That is true. How do we corroborate what signals indicate to us, either directly or subconsciously, that this is information you can trust? So I'm kind of drawing on that. And at least back then it looks like real names and faces with real credentials and expertise. It looked like real contact information, like a real physical mailing address or business ID number, or contact information like a phone number or an email address, not just a form going into nowhere. Um, it's things like citation of sources and referencing high quality, authoritative, credible information to corroborate what you are saying. Uh, it's leaning into your own unique lived experience. So this maybe leans into the journalism slash content slash leadership slash expert type content situation, but like, why are you the one to be talking about that thing? What expertise do you have that you bring to the table? Make sure that comes through clearly. Um, in order to increase your likelihood of being cited as the authoritative answer on that, it's not terribly different from how we thought about that for Google. It's just now testing and learning and experimenting with what signals of humanity we need to prioritize. Now, I'm comfortable not knowing exactly what those are, but my bias is definitely going to be toward concrete signals of trust. I imagine as a journalist, you
00:18:14.600 — 00:22:56.260 referenced multiple sources to fact check, right? So if someone gave you a piece of information, you're going to check here, here and here to corroborate if that is is accurate. Our data from your research is showing that a similar thing is happening with brand information. Right. The LLM is going to multiple sites to verify this is in fact their their address or their business hours or many items. So, you know, some of the guidance we've been providing to our customers is to ensure that you've got consistent, accurate information across all of the places that they're going to be searching. Are there other pieces of technical advice like this that you are providing to your clients to help ensure that they appear as trustworthy as possible to the LMS? Yeah, well, I love what you just said about the information corroborating itself. Like these things have to match. Otherwise, something doesn't add up, right? Right. That's top priority.
But I also think structuring information, structured data will probably start to play a growing role. Knowing how much those AI LLM platforms try to return information to users and searchers in structured ways, tabular formats, listicles, things like that. I think it helps them make sense of the very messy web a lot easier. That's why structured data was introduced all those years ago for Google being in the big search engines. Um, it's a smart way to tag and structure and organize that information so that those platforms can understand it easily, apply it where it is most relevant, and hopefully corroborate other pieces of your ecosystem. I don't know, like we a lot of our search essentials very much still apply. I'm finding us shifting more toward what are the kinds of questions people are answering that are asking, what are the types of questions that people are asking that they didn't ask before because Google couldn't do it? Oh, interesting. So the LLM is actually training us that training us to step away from Google speak.
Right. Like I used to search for pizza near me or something like that, but I, I knew I couldn't add too many variables because it couldn't answer. Now I'm learning. I could get as detailed as I want to. It's a whole new world. Yeah. You know, I still absolutely looked up, you know, best dinner take out near me. Open now, last night in Google. That was the best tool for that job. But had I been planning a birthday party for someone with dietary restrictions in a certain party count and they don't like Mexican food, but they love Japanese food, maybe I would have approached that project a little differently. Google is not the most efficient or effective way to accomplish that task, but an AI search tool would be. I love it, I love that. Consumer behaviors are changing. We're learning from the LMS. They're learning from us. As marketers, it feels like our playbook is not going to apply in this new era. And one of the areas where this is most especially true is around metrics and how we evaluate our own success. So I would love to chat a bit about this perspective. Um, especially as an agency, I imagine you're beholden to delivering ROI information and reports about effectiveness. How are you talking to your CMO about how to think about measuring effectiveness in this new era? Part of that is illustrating and enlightening them. That narrow Google SEO thinking is one tiny piece of the discoverability. Picture all the moments and places that they could be intersecting with their customers. So step one is just helping them understand that massive shift search is different and looks different. The next part is helping them sort of process and navigate the reality of, you know, clicks and traffic and rankings. Yes, there's still good diagnostic metrics. There's still important things that we should be tracking, but they are hardly the only measure of whether your search effort was impactful in this new world, because traffic and clicks and rankings aren't really a thing in this world. I mean, traffic and clicks are. But that's not the ideal metric of success from an AI LMS search necessarily. Like, we don't say that a purchase or a click is Automatically the best KPI for someone who engages with the social post. So we need to also think about what do metrics of success look like for AI search. And so far, metrics of success for AI search are pretty basic, based on what tools and capabilities we have available to us as an industry that it is things like for the keywords I've decided I care about already.
00:22:58.420 — 00:24:13.160 How well does my brand show up versus my competitors? Ish. Yeah, because it's personalized. I can put my keyword into these tools, but the moment there is any context added to that and we go into the long tail and into the personal nuance, everything changes. So yeah, it's not a simple answer right now, but the one thing I am sort of advising clients to think about is to zoom out a little bit and consider of all the organic moments where someone might search across their search journey, where are they likely to intersect with you, and do you deliver what they expect to find there. I imagine your background in journalism, and the disruptive events that you have seen throughout your career make you especially adept at having these conversations with the clients that you work with about how to how to navigate the disruptive change. So I'd love to hear a little bit about some of the transformations you have experienced. I'm especially curious how you navigated or why you made the jump from the leap from journalism to to SEO and marketing, and how you think AI fits into this broader story of disruption? Yeah, I've lived in a disruptive world since the beginning
00:24:14.560 — 00:25:34.640 called your millennial. Um, you know, so I am one of those folks who've been through the multiple recessions and wars and so on and so forth. And it's just it's, I don't know, like disruption is just my natural habitat at this point, but that is actually how I ended up in marketing. So I started in the journalism school. I was a magazine journalist. Um, but as the I believe it was, the 2008 recession was hitting and the news and magazine and media industry was looking really, really shaky. Um, I thought maybe I need to pivot a little bit and use, um, the skills I've developed in journalism and digital journalism in particular and apply that in the marketing world, and it's generally served me quite well. So I've gotten to work with a ton of major brands around the world who, even if my business where I work, is not experiencing major disruptions in that moment, all these different brands in different verticals are experiencing all kinds of disruption at any given moment and navigating that change. Then add to that that I work in search, which is also a constant world of change. So I don't know. That constant state of change
00:25:36.440 — 00:27:20.860 just equips you for more change. Yeah. I don't know, I'm kind of rambly there and waxing poetic, but do you still do journalism work? I do, I do. Um, so you can't shake the journalist out of the girls? Yeah. Yeah. So I cover, uh, conservation and wildlife topics specifically. So I've been into animals and conservation since I was a little kid. And I hang out outside and take pictures of them, and, uh, occasionally someone publishes one of my articles about it. So. Yeah, that's actually been kind of interesting, too, is staying connected to the journalism world. They're experiencing this massive disruption as AI is changing the economy of the media web. So, yeah, I'm kind of, uh, following the whole journalism versus AI conversation really closely as well. I think there's going to be massive transformation there that's going to need a lot of change management. Yeah, absolutely. Um, where can we follow you and discover some of your work? Oh, gosh. Well, I'm at Heather physique on all the things, if you like marketing and if you like critters at me. Conservation at HP conservation is my handle for that stuff. Oh that's incredible. That's incredible. I'm absolutely going to be checking that out. Um, this has been such a fascinating conversation. I wish we had more time. I'd love to have you back, uh, in the future to check in about, um, the progress that brands are making and any additional pivots we see. Wonderful. Thank you so much. This has been great. Let's do it again. Thank you.
That's a wrap on this episode of The Visibility Brief. If you found this useful, subscribe, leave us a review or send this to a colleague who needs to hear it. We'll see you next time.
