Google announced some executive changes last night with Liz Reid being named the new head of Google Search. Pandu Nayak stepped down as the lead of search quality and ranking. Cathy Edwards stepped down as the lead Google Apps, Google News, Google Discover and other ecosystem efforts. Finally, Cheenu Venkatachary has stepped up to lead our quality and ranking teams, in place of Pandu Nayak.

Liz Reid was leading up core search experiences for the past few years. Now she is leading up all of Search, still reporting to Prabhakar Raghavan, who replaced Ben Gomes in 2020. Prabhakar Raghavan leads up all of Google Search, not just core search but also Knowledge & Information (K&I), which is inclusive of a number of different areas, including Ads, Assistant & Gemini, Geo, Commerce and more.

Here is what Liz posted on LinkedIn:

Here is the statement Google sent me:

Pandu Nayak is staying with Google but moving into what seems to me less of a hectic role. He is becoming Chief Scientist, Search. In this new role he continue to advise and focus on technical challenges in Google Search. Pandu will remain deeply involved in our broader efforts around content understanding, ranking and exploring how new AI technologies can enhance Google Search, Google told me. We’ve written a lot about Pandu Nayak on this site, he has been incredibly influential over the years at Google Search, specific to core search.

Cathy Edwards who I interviewed for SMX on SGE is moving back home to Australia to be closer to their family. Cathy Edwards has had an incredibly successful and impressive career, having created start-up successes that were acquired by Apple and then Google. Apple acquired her company named Chomp in 2012. She will be moving to to the Long-term Bets team in Knowledge & Information (K&I), where they’ll help incubate new product ideas in partnership with leaders across K&I. It fits her start up career.

Cheenu Venkatachary will step up to lead Google’s Search quality and ranking teams. Venkatachary worked at Google from November 2009 through December 2014. He then co-founded Laserlike in July 2015, which was acquired by Apple in 2018. He then left apple to go back to Google as a VP of Engineering in October 2022, to then be promoted to lead Google Search quality and ranking in March 2024.

So there you have it – those are the executive changes impacting Google Search right now.

Here is some of the SEO reaction so far to this news:

Forum discussion at LinkedIn.