Google says AEO and GEO are just SEO. Here's what that actually changes for you

For two years our industry has been busy inventing acronyms. AEO, GEO, answer engine this, generative engine that. Whole consultancies have sprung up promising secret techniques to get you into AI answers. Then Google published its official guide to optimising for generative AI features, and the headline message landed like a bucket of cold water: there is no separate discipline. Optimising for AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google says, is just SEO done well.

Cue a fair amount of spluttering across the SEO world. So let me give you an honest read on this, because the truth sits somewhere between "Google is right" and "well, they would say that, wouldn't they".

What Google actually said

The guide is refreshingly blunt for an official document. A few things stood out.

You do not need special files or markup to appear in AI answers. No llms.txt, no AI-specific text files, no bespoke schema invented for the occasion. Google may crawl and index plenty of file types, but it says none of them get special treatment in generative results.

You do not need to chop your content into tiny "chunks" for the machines. Google reckons its systems understand a page that covers several topics perfectly well and can surface the relevant bit. So all that advice about breaking everything into bite-sized answer blocks? Google is waving it away.

And the foundations still rule. Unique, genuinely useful, non-commodity content. Clear structure. Good technical health. The same things that have always made pages rank are, Google argues, the same things that get you cited in AI answers.

Alongside the guide, Google also confirmed its spam policies now explicitly cover AI Overviews and AI Mode, with a pointed warning about buying or manipulating citations. Treat that as the line in the sand it is.

Where Google is right

I will give them this. A lot of "GEO" advice over the past two years has been snake oil. Magic files, secret markup, gaming tricks that were really just link spam wearing a new hat. If the official guidance kills off some of that nonsense, good. Brands have wasted real money chasing shortcuts that were never going to work.

And the core point holds up. We have said for a while that the fundamentals of being useful, trustworthy and well-structured are exactly what AI systems reward, because they are trying to surface the most helpful answer just as classic search always claimed to. The brands doing proper, content-led SEO were already most of the way to AI visibility. That is not a coincidence.

Where I would push back

Here is the bit Google leaves out. Saying "it's all just SEO" is technically reasonable and also a touch self-serving. Google has every incentive to keep you optimising for Google's ecosystem and not thinking too hard about ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Copilot, which all source and cite content in their own ways.

Being visible across AI answers in 2026 is not identical to ranking blue links in 2019. The emphasis has shifted. Off-site mentions, brand authority, being the source others reference, real reviews and genuine expertise carry more weight when a model is deciding who to quote. Whether you call that SEO or GEO matters far less than recognising the centre of gravity has moved. Calling it "still SEO" is fine, as long as nobody uses that as an excuse to keep doing exactly what they did five years ago and expecting the same results.

What to do now

Forget the acronym argument and focus on what moves the needle.

Double down on genuinely useful, original content that says something a hundred other pages do not. Build real authority off-site, so other trusted sources mention and reference you, because that is increasingly how models decide who is worth citing. Keep your technical foundations clean and your structure clear, so both Google and the AI engines can extract you easily. Make your expertise visible, with named authors, real credentials and proper depth. And stay well clear of anyone selling citation-buying or manipulation schemes, because Google has just told you exactly where that ends.

Do those things and you are optimising for AI answers and traditional search at the same time. Call it SEO, call it GEO, call it whatever you like. The work is what counts.

At Clicky we help brands get found and cited across both traditional search and AI answer engines, without the gimmicks. If you want an honest look at where your AI visibility actually stands, get in touch and we will talk it through.

Sources: A new resource for optimizing for generative AI in Google Search (Google Search Central) and Google publishes guide on optimizing for generative AI features (Search Engine Land).