Google says optimizing for AI is still SEO

This month Google published official guidance on optimizing for its generative AI features in search, and the short version is that there is nothing new to optimize for. The two acronyms the industry has been selling for the past couple of years, answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization, describe work that Google says is simply SEO.

In the same month it retired FAQ rich results.

Two announcements pointing the same way: stop paying for the new thing, finish the old thing.

What the guidance actually says

Stripped to the load-bearing parts:

• There is no separate discipline. AEO and GEO are SEO under different names.
• You do not need an llms.txt file.
• You do not need to chunk your content into machine-sized pieces.
• You do not need to rewrite existing pages “for AI”.
• What does matter: content that is genuinely yours rather than a commodity restatement of what everyone else published, a technically sound site, good images and video, and a well-maintained Google Business Profile.

For anyone who has been running local accounts through the last two years, none of that is a surprise. It is a relief to have it written down, because it ends an argument we have been having in client meetings roughly once a fortnight since AI Overviews first showed up.

It is worth being precise about what the guidance does not claim. It does not say generative answers changed nothing. Clicks are scarcer, questions are answered higher up the page, and being named inside an answer matters in a way that a ranking report does not capture. What it says is that the inputs did not change. The same accurate, specific, well-structured business information that earned a good result in search is what gets quoted in an answer.

What to stop buying

Most agency inboxes have had the same pitches landing for two years. Now there is something to point at when a client forwards one.

1. llms.txt files. A file in your root that nobody asked you for and Google says is not needed. If you already have one it is harmless, and it is also doing nothing.
2. Content chunking retainers. Restructuring pages into “semantic blocks” so machines can parse them. Machines could parse a well-formed heading and a clear paragraph already.
3. Mass rewriting for AI. The most expensive item on the list, and the one most likely to make a page worse by stripping out the specifics that made it worth quoting.
4. AI visibility rank trackers sold as fact. Sampling a handful of prompts and charting the result is an estimate. Estimates can be useful. They are not the measurement they are usually priced as.
5. Schema bought by the kilo. Markup that describes the business, the services, the location and the hours is worth having. Markup added because a tool counted how many types you had is not.

What replaces them is unglamorous and has been on the list the whole time: unique pages about work you actually do, real photographs and video, a fast site, and a profile that is accurate to the week.

FAQ rich results are retired

The second item lands harder for local businesses than the first, because the FAQ block was one of the few rich results a small site could reliably earn.

Google cut those results back to a narrow set of site types a couple of years ago, so most local businesses lost the visible benefit then. Now the feature is gone.

What that means in practice:

• The markup stops producing anything in results. Leaving it in place costs nothing, so there is no emergency, but there is no reason to keep generating it on new pages either.
• Do not delete the FAQ content itself. This is the mistake we expect to see most in the next month. The expanded block was a display format. The questions and answers on the page are the thing that answers a customer and the thing an answer engine quotes. Removing them because a rich result went away is throwing out the asset and keeping the wrapper.
• If anything, the FAQ sections on your service pages just got more important relative to the markup, because the only benefit left is the plain one: a question asked the way customers ask it, answered directly underneath.

If you sell this work

For agencies, this is a scoping conversation rather than a product problem.

If you have an AEO or GEO line item on your proposals, you do not need to remove it, but you do need it to describe real work: research, writing, photography, technical fixes, profile maintenance. If the line item describes files and formatting tricks, it is now indefensible with a straight face, and the client will eventually read the same guidance you did.

The better position is the honest one, and it sells fine. Nobody can promise placement inside a generative answer. What you can promise is that every fact about the business is correct and consistent everywhere a machine looks, that the pages answer real questions in plain language, and that the site is fast and readable. That is the whole job, priced as ongoing work rather than as a one-off package with a new acronym on it.

Expect the “our competitor bought an AI SEO package” conversation anyway. Have this month’s guidance open when you have it.

What we are telling clients

• Cancel or decline anything on your bill whose deliverable is llms.txt, chunking or rewriting existing pages for machines.
• Stop generating FAQ markup on new pages. Leave what exists, and leave every FAQ section on the page itself exactly where it is.
• Take the budget that was going to AI optimization and put it into photography, video and a genuine page about your most profitable service.
• Audit the profile this month. It is named explicitly in the guidance and it is the cheapest item on this list to put right.
• Fix the technical basics you have been deferring. Speed, headings, titles, alt text, a clean sitemap.
• Ask any vendor selling you AI optimization to name which of the four stated inputs their deliverable improves. If the answer is none of them, that is your answer.

The useful outcome is that there is now something to point at in a meeting. An AI search visibility line on your bill has to name work someone does: pages written, photographs taken, a business profile kept accurate to the week. If it names a file or a format instead, cancel it and put the money somewhere a customer will see it. If you resell this work, the white-label side of our business is having the same conversation with its clients this month.