What it is
Google stepped in to define GEO on 15 May — nearly three months ago.
That day Search Central posted an announcement and shipped a new document, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search, under a section created to hold it, covering “mythbusting common AEO/GEO misconceptions” by name. It opens with: “From Google Search’s perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO.” The document was updated again on 10 July.
Two more followed on 5 June: a brand-new page on third-party SEO tools and services, and a new section in the long-standing “Do you need an SEO?” guide on how to vet a vendor — with “AEO” and “GEO” services named explicitly.
Two other things happened in the same window. On 7 July, Search Console added platform properties, so people with no website of their own — running only Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube — can now see how their content performs in Google Search and Discover. For brands, that means your content on third-party platforms finally has an official visibility number attached to it. (This is separate from June’s generative AI performance report: that one covers your site’s impressions inside AI features, this one covers how your social accounts perform in Search.) On 14 July, Google Images got a 25th-anniversary redesign and wired an image generation model into AI Overviews. That one has nothing to do with your visibility; read it and move on.
What Google crossed off is exactly what the industry is selling
The AI guide lists what you don’t need to do: you don’t need an llms.txt or any AI-specific file to be understood; you don’t need to break your content into tiny pieces for models to digest; you don’t need to write in some special register for generative search; and chasing “mentions” around the web isn’t as helpful as it looks.
Every one of those maps onto something being packaged and sold right now. llms.txt is the clearest case — no major engine has ever announced support for it, yet this year it got talked about as infrastructure. Google has now crossed it off its own list.
The guide also says structured data isn’t a requirement, and that line has to be read by the document’s own rules: Google means it isn’t required for Google’s generative features, because its own ranking systems already recognize you through other signals. It doesn’t say markup is useless, and it has no standing to speak for anyone else. For engines without Google’s ranking stack underneath them, machine-readable markup remains one of the few handles they have — that’s our read, not Google’s, and the gap between those two is what the next section is about.
But “GEO is still SEO” opens with five words
“From Google Search’s perspective.”
Those five words are Google’s own. They fence the document’s scope precisely: Google is talking about AI Overviews and AI Mode — features that live inside Google Search and run on Google’s own ranking systems. Of course that’s still SEO. It’s the same machinery underneath.
Your customers aren’t only asking their questions there. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot each carry their own index and their own citation logic. Google has no jurisdiction over them and no obligation to speak for them. Carry “GEO is still SEO” outside Google’s own gate and Google hasn’t endorsed it either.
What’s happening in the market right now is a wave of people quoting that line with the first five words cut off, as a conclusion about the whole of AI search.
It also handed clients a checklist for vetting vendors
The third-party page is blunt. Its words: “Google doesn’t evaluate third-party services, so be wary of such claims and those making them.” And: “Third-party tools don’t have access to our internal ranking data. They can’t guarantee performance.” Plus an observation about the tooling industry as a whole — some third-party services hand you data that users misread as coming from Google.
The three companion questions sit in the updated “Do you need an SEO?” guide:
- Do they cite official Google documentation as supporting evidence for their recommendations?
- If they have advice on optimizing for AI experiences (also known as “AEO” or “GEO” services), is their advice aligned with Google Search’s official guidance on optimizing for generative AI features?
- Do they use tools that are aligned with Google’s guidance?
Keep that checklist. It asks sharper questions than most buyers think to ask. It reaches us too, of course, so here are our answers up front: the score is ours, and the report says so — those 12 dimensions measure on-page structural readiness, which is not a judgment of quality, not an SEO ranking, and not actual traffic, and that sentence sits at the bottom of every report you share. As for the first question, on citing official documentation: you’re reading the answer. Every date and quotation here carries its source, and you can click through and check.
A vendor with answers isn’t afraid of this checklist. The ones who should be are the ones printing “guaranteed AI citations” on a price list.
Should you act now
Three things, in order.
One, read the AI guide yourself. It’s short, and it’s the only document you hold where Google’s word is final. If a vendor’s Google-related advice doesn’t line up with it, ask them to explain why.
Two, put those three questions to your current vendor verbatim. No answer, or an answer along the lines of “that’s our proprietary algorithm,” and you’re looking at exactly what the document was written to protect you from. Ours are in the section above, if you want something to compare against.
Three, the half Google can’t reach has to be measured separately. Who gets cited inside ChatGPT or Perplexity, and which version of you they cite, will never appear anywhere in Google’s documentation. There’s no official console to open for that half — it takes sustained, cross-engine, repeated testing, because the same question asked today and asked next week will name someone else. The tedious part is that it has no finish line, and no amount of guide-reading makes it easier. That’s the part we watch for clients (see what managed covers).
Do the first one. When you finish, you’ll notice that Google made its own half very clear — and left the half it has no standing to speak for quietly blank.