On May 13, Google published an official AI Optimization Guide. For a year, marketing agencies have been selling "GEO" (Generative Engine Optimization) and "AEO" (Answer Engine Optimization) as separate disciplines requiring special tactics. Google's guide effectively says: no, it doesn't.
Their exact words: "optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO."
That sentence is going to cause a lot of awkward sales meetings.
What Google actually said
The guide explicitly lists tactics that the GEO industry has been pushing, and tells you they don't help with Google's AI features. The list includes:
- llms.txt files (the new markdown file you put at the root of your site to "tell AI what to read")
- Special AI markup or schema beyond what already exists
- "Chunking" content for AI consumption
- Rewriting pages just for AI parsing
- Targeting fan-out queries (an internal Google concept the GEO industry has been chasing)
- Buying inauthentic mentions to boost authority signals
What Google says DOES matter for AI search is the same list that's mattered for years: original expert-led content, clean technical SEO, page experience, real authority signals, Google Business Profile for local, and standard schema for rich results.
What this means if you're already paying an agency for "GEO"
You need to ask them a direct question on your next call: "Show me which of my visibility wins this quarter would NOT have happened with great SEO alone."
If they can't answer, you're paying a premium for a relabel.
What this means for buyers using AI search
This part is where it gets nuanced, and where Howl's position is honest.
Google's guide only speaks for Google Search and AI Overviews. It does NOT speak for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or other AI engines. Those use different ranking signals, different training data, and different real-time search infrastructure. Some of them (Perplexity especially) do read structured data and may use llms.txt.
So the GEO tactics aren't entirely useless. They're just not Google-relevant. And since your buyers are using all of these engines, not just Google, the right answer isn't "stop doing GEO." It's "stop selling GEO as a separate magic discipline, and start doing excellent SEO with smart additions for the non-Google engines."
Where we land at Howl
We've been calling this work "SEO and AI Search Visibility" rather than GEO/AEO since before Google's announcement. Now we have validation from the source. The work hasn't changed. The honesty around what's actually moving the needle has.
If your firm is publishing content that real experts wrote, structured cleanly, backed by real authority signals, and crawlable, you'll show up in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. That's the work. Anyone selling you a separate "GEO package" on top of that is selling you the same thing twice.
What to do this week
Three things, in order:
- Read Google's own guide. It's short and uncharacteristically direct for a Google document.
- Audit your own marketing investment through this lens. What are you paying for that Google just said doesn't help?
- Don't panic-rewrite anything. The fundamentals haven't changed. Your existing SEO and content work, if it's good, is still doing the job.
If you want a second opinion on what you're currently paying for, book a discovery call. We won't sell you GEO. We'll tell you what we'd actually do.