If you spend any time on LinkedIn, you’ve likely noticed a new breed of guru taking over your feed. Over the last 12 months, a growing number of freelancers and digital marketing agencies claiming to be ‘GEO Experts’ have been preaching about the need to shift focus from appearing in SERPs to ranking in AI overviews instead.
They aren’t selling Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) anymore. Instead, they are pitching GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation). They promise proprietary frameworks, secret tactics, and “hacks” to get your brand cited inside Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.
It sounds high-tech, futuristic, and expensive. Some businesses out there have already committed to spending thousands with these AI search specialists, at a premium above what traditional SEO costs.
Google has entered the chat…
If there’s one voice of authority that digital marketers will listen to. It’s Google. And after staying silent initially, Google has finally addressed the debate around ‘GEO’ as a rebrand of search engine optimisation.
Google’s stance was refreshingly blunt and was followed up by releasing the first formal documentation on optimising for generative AI features.
“From Google Search’s perspective, optimising for generative AI search is optimising for the search experience, and thus still SEO.”
If you’ve been losing sleep over how to rewrite your website for the AI era, you can take a deep breath. The playbook hasn’t been rewritten; it’s just been filtered for quality and authenticity.
Digital Lead at Harrison Carloss, Molly Boston said this:
It’s great to see Google come out and put an end to some of the ambiguity behind AI search and how it works. While it might seem obvious to some, hopefully, this information makes people feel a little more empowered to push back when being mis-sold GEO/AEO services. For the rest of us, it’s a nice confirmation that many of the practices we’re using to appear for AI are correct. Hopefully, this documentation from Google, alongside the new AI Assistant default channel on Google Analytics, is the first of many changes to help people have more visibility over AI and its impact on search!
AI still relies on the Index
To understand why GEO isn’t a separate service, you have to look at how Google’s AI actually surfaces information. Features like AI Overviews and AI Mode don’t pull answers out of thin air, nor do they use a separate “AI index.”
Instead, they rely on two core mechanics rooted in standard search:
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): The AI model is “grounded” by Google’s core Search ranking and quality systems. When a user asks a question, Google fetches top-ranking, indexed pages to feed the AI, which then synthesises the response and links back to the sources.
- Query Fan-Out: The system takes a complex user prompt, breaks it down into multiple concurrent sub-queries, and routes them through existing ranking signals to build a comprehensive summary.
The takeaway is simple: If your content doesn’t rank well in the traditional index, the AI will never find it. There is no back door into AI Overviews that bypasses fundamental SEO, no matter how much your GEO Account Manager tries to peddle new tricks.
Mythbusting the “AI Search Hacks”
People pushing GEO have generated a lot of noise about technical requirements that supposedly appease large language models. Google’s new guidelines explicitly called out the most popular “hacks” as entirely unnecessary.
If an agency tries to upsell you on these line items, save your budget:
- llms.txt files: You do not need to create machine-readable text summaries of your site as most AI as Google’s John Mueller will tell you.
- “Chunking” content: Breaking your text into micro-paragraphs for AI retrieval is a myth. Google’s systems are fully capable of understanding complex, multi-topic pages. However, accurate and logical use of h tags can help users and bots alike find relevant content.
- AI-specific rewrites: You don’t need to alter your tone of voice and language or stuff long-tail variants to sound “friendly” to a robot; writing for your users should always be a priority.
- Special AI schema markup: While schema can help understanding of your content, there is no secret tag that magically triggers an AI citation. Standard structured data remains helpful for rich snippets, but it won’t force an AI overview.
- Inauthentic mentions: Paying for bulk placements or fake citations across low-quality digital PR networks won’t work. In fact, Google clarified that its standard search spam policies apply directly to AI Overviews. Mass-producing AI slop to game the system is a quick ticket to algorithmic penalties.
Don’t write for machines, write for people
So, if you aren’t supposed to optimise for the AI, what are you supposed to do? You optimise for the human reader.
Google’s guide draws a brilliant line in the sand between two types of content:
| Content Type | Example | The AI Impact |
| Commodity Content | “5 Tips to Sell More Retirement Properties” | Easily Replicated. Recycled, common knowledge that an LLM can summarise instantly without needing to link to you. |
| Non-Commodity Content | “How We Changed Perceptions About Retirement Communities to Increase Sales” | High Visibility. Unique, lived experience, original data, and first-hand perspectives that AI cannot synthesise from thin air. |
To win in the era of AI search, your SEO content must offer unique value. It needs real author experience (the “E” in Google’s E-E-A-T framework) as well as being technically sound.
Stop Chasing Acronyms
Marketing will always be vulnerable to shiny object syndrome. When a disruptive technology like generative AI arrives, the immediate reaction is to invent a new discipline to sell it.
But the truth is far more grounded. The technical foundations of SEO, such as clean code, fast loading speeds, proper indexation, crawlability, and clear JavaScript handling, are exactly what AI features need to discover your site. And the editorial foundations of SEO, which are centred around creating helpful, reliable, original content, are exactly what the AI needs to trust your site.
Our Summary
There’s no such thing as GEO. It’s just good SEO, but packaged up by opportunists looking to stand out in a crowded digital services market and inflate traditional SEO prices. If you’re already paying an SEO agency or doing it in-house, that’s half the battle. What AI has done is push us to do SEO content to a much higher standard. No more buying trashy links to fudge some authority or pumping out 20 blogs a week of recycled drivel.
Fix your technical problems, bring real experience to your writing, and focus on the user. That’s always been the playbook.
Interested in finding out how we can help your SEO and content strategy? Visit our SEO page or contact us.