Knowledge base v2.13.0 · Community edition · data through 2 October 2026
Topic · AI and Search
Google's position on both days is that GEO is not a separate discipline: AI Overviews and AI Mode use the same crawling and index as Search, are built on the core ranking systems and add grounding and query fan-out at serving, so good SEO is good GEO. Day 2 repeated and extended this: the AI features are a different experience of the same content, sites need no extra work to appear in them, and they use the same index structures and token-based snippets as classic results, with fan-out queries run against the Search index. Google's structured data talk said the same processed markup feeds classic results and AI features and that raw schema.org markup is generally not put straight into a model's context (said at the event, not in Google's docs), and Google's AI features guide says no special markup is needed for generative AI search. Google added that both retrieval routes, posting lists and vector embeddings, work from page content, so the content mantra Google started about 25 years ago still stands, while Google's internationalisation talk stressed that AI answers are still language-dependent. Day 3 closed on the same line: Google's final slide said AI on Google is just SEO, since AI Overviews and AI Mode use the same processes as traditional results and have very few of their own, so no new acronym is needed, and query understanding flows into the AI features too. Google said spam techniques aimed at manipulating AI responses violate the same spam policies, and its marketing research talk also advised optimising for people to win in generative AI search. A community speaker's agency found some pages doing better in AI features and third-party LLMs than in classic search, so its answer to whether good SEO is good GEO was 'it depends'. Author’s view: that comparison mixed Google's AI features with other LLMs, so it does not refute Google's line; measure each surface separately. A second recording of Day 1 placed the 'GEO is not needed' line at the end of Gary Illyes's talk on what is new in Search; he traced 'SEO is dead' posts back to a 1997 forum post titled 'Search engine R.I.P.' and said the new AI features only create more opportunities for site owners. A community speaker argued the opposite on the label, for adopting GEO as a chance to leave SEO's bad reputation behind, while another said AI search changes the workflow but not the foundation and expands SEO's target to whether information is useful and easy to extract as a source. In the Day 1 Q&A a Google panelist said optimising for AI search can indeed hurt classic search, pointing to questionable GEO advice published online. A second recording of Day 2 confirmed that AI Overviews and AI Mode typically do not ground answers by reading pages live, unlike Gemini asked about a specific page, and that schema.org markup is first sorted, quality-checked and indexed before it is passed on as grounding context rather than put into a model's context as text.
Things in this topic 15
Counts are claims that name the thing. All things
What to do
Knowing how Search works largely means knowing how the AI features work.
“If you know how Search works, you largely also know how AI features work.”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 11:35 · What's new in the world of SearchEvidence slide photo, transcript
AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
Speaker Cherry Prommawin, Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 11:45 · How Search works and where's AI?Evidence slide photo, transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-01story angle A-001glossary terms AI Mode, Grounding
Google's answer to 'SEO is dead, long live GEO' is not to worry about the name: good SEO is good GEO and AEO.
“Don't worry about what to call it. Good SEO is good GEO, AEO.”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker Cherry Prommawin, Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 11:45 · How Search works and where's AI?Evidence 2 slide photos, transcript
Used bymyth M-001quote Q-001story angle A-001glossary term GEO and AEO
Three reasons were given: generative AI features are built directly on the core ranking systems, query fan-out expands the original query to find related information, and generative AI features highlight content indexed by Google Search.
Speaker Cherry Prommawin, Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 11:45 · How Search works and where's AI?Evidence slide photo, transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-01myth M-001story angle A-001glossary term AI Overviews
Myth: optimise for AI over readers. Google's answer: optimise for people, with no need to obsess over precise keywords or AI phrasing, no need to chop content, and no need for llms.txt.
“LLMS.txt isn't necessary.”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker Cherry Prommawin, Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 11:45 · How Search works and where's AI?Evidence slide photo, transcript
Used byrequirements DEV-AIF-02, DEV-AIF-03myth M-002story angle A-001glossary term llms.txt
Myth: your website is no longer relevant. Google's answer: keep content crawlable, well structured, fast and easy to read, for readers and for AI tools.
Speaker Cherry Prommawin, Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 11:45 · How Search works and where's AI?Evidence slide photo, transcript
Optimising for people is optimising for generative AI Search.
“Optimizing for people is optimizing for Generative AI Search”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker Cherry Prommawin, Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 11:45 · How Search works and where's AI?Evidence slide photo, transcript
Used byquote Q-002
Gary Illyes argued that GEO is a label invented to create a new field and is not needed. Understanding how SEO works is enough.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 11:35 · What's new in the world of SearchEvidence notes, transcript
Used bystory angle A-001
Gary Illyes traced 'SEO is dead' predictions back to a post titled 'Search engine R.I.P.' on an online advertising forum on 10 November 1997, and said such posts still appear every month or even every week.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 11:35 · What's new in the world of SearchEvidence transcript
Used bystory angle A-001
Gary Illyes said SEO is not dead and that the new AI features only create more opportunities for site owners to take advantage of.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 1, 11:35 · What's new in the world of SearchEvidence transcript
Used bystory angle A-001
A community speaker said not all SEO work was wrong: a site still has to be crawlable and visible before it is even considered, and much of that work is plumbing, not gaming.
“There's a lot of plumbing that's not gaming.”
Speaker Thiago PojdaIn Day 1, 13:10 · Lightning session A: Automation and AIEvidence transcript
A community speaker argued for adopting the GEO label as the industry's chance to leave behind the bad reputation SEO built, unlike Google's view earlier the same day that the new name is not needed.
Speaker Thiago PojdaIn Day 1, 13:10 · Lightning session A: Automation and AIEvidence transcript
Used bystory angle A-001
In a community speaker's view, AI search changes the workflow but not the foundation: where one query once returned ten blue links and left research and comparison to the user, one query can now lead to many different answers.
Speaker Jovana AvramovicIn Day 1, 16:20 · Lightning session C: CrawlingEvidence transcript
A community speaker summed up the shift as SEO's target expanding rather than moving: besides asking whether a page can rank, ask whether its information is useful as a source and easy to extract.
“The target is not shifting; it is expanding.”
Speaker Jovana AvramovicIn Day 1, 16:20 · Lightning session C: CrawlingEvidence transcript
Asked whether optimising for AI search can hurt classic search or the reverse, a Google panelist said yes, pointing to questionable GEO advice published online that he declined to name.
Speaker not identifiedIn Day 1, 16:35 · Q&AEvidence transcript
Google's guide for generative AI features says optimising for generative AI search is optimising for the search experience, and is therefore still SEO.
“optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO”
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 1, 11:45 · How Search works and where's AI?
Used bymyth M-001story angle A-001glossary term GEO and AEO
AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on top of Search results: they are a different experience of the same content Google already has.
Speaker Erin SparlingIn Day 2, 10:40 · Lightning session D: Rendering and JavaScriptEvidence transcript
Used bystory angle A-001
AI Overviews and AI Mode typically do not ground their answers by reading pages live, unlike Gemini when a user asks about a specific page, Google said.
Speaker Erin SparlingIn Day 2, 10:40 · Lightning session D: Rendering and JavaScriptEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-PRF-02
Gary Illyes said the common SEO advice to chunk content for AI systems is misunderstood: chunking is real, but it matters at the level of an AI model's context window.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 2, 11:30 · Understanding what's on a pageEvidence transcript
Used bymyth M-002
The structured data Google processes is not fed very differently to AI Overviews and AI Mode: after cleaning and quality work, the same data goes to both the classic results page and the AI features.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-02
As far as the speaker knows, in most of Google's main AI uses a page's schema.org markup is not turned into text and put directly into the model's context; the data is first sorted out, checked for quality and indexed before it is passed on as grounding context.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
The speaker said there are concerns that feeding raw schema.org markup straight into an AI model's context would be a big abuse vector, one reason Google does not do so.
Speaker Ryan LeveringIn Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Evidence transcript
Sites need no extra work to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode: both work on top of the existing web results, so what works for web results also works for the AI features.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 14:15 · Focusing on Internationalisation and LocalisationEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-01story angle A-001
In classic results users can usually tell when content in their language is missing, poorly translated or from another country, but AI answers synthesize many sources and hide this; the speaker called it an invisible gap.
“an invisible gap”
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 14:15 · Focusing on Internationalisation and LocalisationEvidence transcript
Users often assume AI is all-knowing and borderless, but AI is still language-dependent: if an AI answer is synthesized from the top results, a query in another language draws on a totally different set of data.
“AI is still language-dependent”
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 14:15 · Focusing on Internationalisation and LocalisationEvidence transcript
Site owners may want to research whether they show up in AI answers in each language and market they serve, to find blind spots.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 14:15 · Focusing on Internationalisation and LocalisationEvidence transcript
In the presenter's observation, AI answers to Persian queries are written in Persian but cite some English sources; the presenter explained that Persian content on a topic is often thinner, of lower quality or less relevant, so the systems retrieve from languages with better content, which the presenter called cross-lingual retrieval.
Speaker a second community speakerIn Day 2, 14:30 · Lightning session G: InternationalisationEvidence transcript
AI Overviews and AI Mode use the same index structures and token-based snippets as classic web results, a point Google called important but not obvious.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 16:15 · How does the index look like?Evidence transcript
Google said that when AI Overviews or AI Mode run a query fan-out, the generated queries are sent to Google's Search index and documents come back with their snippets, which then feed the AI-generated answer (part of this passage is unclear in the recording).
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 16:15 · How does the index look like?Evidence transcript
Both retrieval methods Google described, the long-established posting lists and the newer vector embeddings, work from the content of the page.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 16:15 · How does the index look like?Evidence transcript
Google said, hedging with 'I think', that because retrieval is still based on content, the content mantra Google started about 25 years ago (as of 2026) still stands.
“this mantra that we started 25 years ago or whatever still stands, whether we like it or not”
Speaker GoogleIn Day 2, 16:15 · How does the index look like?Evidence transcript
Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI features lists 'overfocusing on structured data' among the things site owners don't need to do: structured data is not required for generative AI search and no special schema.org markup is needed, though it remains worth using because it helps pages become eligible for rich results.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-02
There is no separate markup for AI features: by Google's account the same processed markup feeds classic results and AI answers, and raw schema.org is generally not passed into model context, so invest in the types Google documents for its features rather than in extra markup written for AI.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 2, 13:35 · What is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-02
Check AI Overviews and AI Mode with native-language queries in each target market, not with translated English keywords, and compare with the country breakdown of Search Console's generative AI performance report; topics where competitors are cited and you are not point to missing or weak local content.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 2, 14:15 · Focusing on Internationalisation and Localisation
Used byrequirement DEV-MON-07
There is no separate AI index to optimise for: when a page never shows up as a source in AI Overviews or AI Mode, first check that it is indexed, that no nosnippet rule blocks its snippet and that the site is not excluded in Search Console's generative AI setting, the eligibility conditions Google lists.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 2, 16:15 · How does the index look like?
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-01
Write for both retrieval routes without keyword stuffing: name the page's subject in the plain words people search with, because posting lists match the words on the page, and explain the topic fully, because embedding retrieval matches meaning, so every keyword variation is unnecessary.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 2, 16:15 · How does the index look like?
Google's marketing research talk reached the same advice as Search: optimise for people to win in generative AI search.
“Optimise for people to win in generative AI search”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker Pablo PérezIn Day 3, 15:30 · Mastering the messy middleEvidence slide photo, transcript
Google's closing slide said AI on Google is just SEO: AI features on Google Search use exactly the same processes as traditional results, so no new acronym is needed, as none was for mobile-first indexing or structured data.
“AI features on Google Search use exactly the same processes as traditional results.”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 16:00 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.Evidence slide photo, transcript
Google's generative AI features in Search build on the traditional ways of searching, so query understanding also flows into AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Speaker John MuellerIn Day 3, 10:25 · Making sense of users' queriesEvidence transcript
Because every system runs fan-out differently, Google advised understanding that fan-out happens but not overfocusing on individual fan-out queries or on how to rank for them.
“I would not overfocus on which individual fan-out queries happen and how can I rank for those”
Speaker John MuellerIn Day 3, 10:25 · Making sense of users' queriesEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-03
Google's quality talk asked why users would read AI-generated content when they could ask an LLM the same questions directly.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Google's quality talk said Google clarified that traditional spam techniques aimed at manipulating AI responses also violate its spam policies, and that Google can take action against them.
Speaker GoogleIn Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about QualityEvidence transcript
Nik Vujic's agency puts Search Console data, LLM referral traffic from GA4 and the data from Search Console's generative AI report into one LLM prompt to compare a client's performance in classic search and in AI features.
Speaker Nik VujicIn Day 3, 14:20 · Lightning session L: Understanding SERPs and your usersEvidence transcript
Nik Vujic said his agency uses the combined data to test whether good SEO is good GEO, and that the answer is 'it depends': for one client it found pages that performed better in generative AI features and LLMs than in standard search.
Speaker Nik VujicIn Day 3, 14:20 · Lightning session L: Understanding SERPs and your usersEvidence transcript
AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on the Search infrastructure Google has used for 25 to 30 years and have very few processes of their own.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 16:00 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.Evidence transcript
Used bystory angle A-001
Gary Illyes concluded that SEO is not dead.
“To me, that means that SEO is not dead.”
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 16:00 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.Evidence transcript
Google said that each time Search changed someone declared SEO dead, but that new features just mean new opportunities.
Speaker Gary IllyesIn Day 3, 16:00 · Wrapping all up: AI, Search, and making sense of everything.Evidence transcript
Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI features contrasts commodity content, such as '7 Tips for First-Time Homebuyers', with non-commodity content that gives unique expert or experienced takes beyond common knowledge, such as a first-hand account of waiving a home inspection.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality
Used byglossary term Commodity content
Google's guide for generative AI features says creating content that people find unique, compelling and useful will likely influence a website's presence in generative AI search.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 3, 15:30 · Mastering the messy middle
Do not build pages for fan-out queries copied from Gemini or other LLM tools: they differ from system to system and Search Console does not report them. Cover a topic's real subquestions on solid pages instead.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 3, 10:25 · Making sense of users' queries
Used byrequirement DEV-AIF-03
Tactics sold as AI visibility or GEO, such as hidden text aimed at AI answers, mass-produced pages for fan-out queries or keyword-stuffed passages, are judged under the same spam policies as classic ranking manipulation.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 3, 11:15 · How Google thinks about Quality
Used byrequirement DEV-SPM-02
Pages that do better in AI answers than in classic results do not refute Google's line that optimising for people is optimising for generative AI Search, since the comparison mixed Google's AI features with third-party LLMs; measure each surface separately, per page, before deciding what to change.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 3, 14:20 · Lightning session L: Understanding SERPs and your users
A community speaker argued for adopting the GEO label as the industry's chance to leave behind the bad reputation SEO built, unlike Google's view earlier the same day that the new name is not needed.
Gary Illyes argued that GEO is a label invented to create a new field and is not needed. Understanding how SEO works is enough.
A community speaker argued for adopting the GEO label as the industry's chance to leave behind the bad reputation SEO built, unlike Google's view earlier the same day that the new name is not needed.
Google's answer to 'SEO is dead, long live GEO' is not to worry about the name: good SEO is good GEO and AEO.
Gary Illyes said SEO is not dead and that the new AI features only create more opportunities for site owners to take advantage of.
Google's answer to 'SEO is dead, long live GEO' is not to worry about the name: good SEO is good GEO and AEO.
AI Overviews and AI Mode may have extra processes of their own, like any other search feature, but the bulk of their processing is the same as for normal Search.
AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
Google said query fan-out is nothing new: it fires, for example, ten different searches in the background, each a normal search on the same systems.
Three reasons were given: generative AI features are built directly on the core ranking systems, query fan-out expands the original query to find related information, and generative AI features highlight content indexed by Google Search.
Googlebot is the crawler Google uses for web search, including Search's AI features.
AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
AI Mode is a feature that sits on top of Google's existing crawling infrastructure, so Google does not crawl a site more because of AI Mode.
AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
John Mueller said Google uses the snippet as a way of building AI Overviews and AI Mode answers, so if a page forbids a snippet, Google cannot use that snippet for them.
AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
Google's AI features guide says a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, with no additional technical requirements.
AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
Google's simple solution for the extra time of live page reads is to make JavaScript-generated content render quickly and efficiently, or to use server-side rendering.
Myth: your website is no longer relevant. Google's answer: keep content crawlable, well structured, fast and easy to read, for readers and for AI tools.
Google urged sites to make sure their JavaScript content can be crawled, rendered and indexed, calling this important today and also tomorrow, as AI systems increasingly ground answers to user requests.
Myth: your website is no longer relevant. Google's answer: keep content crawlable, well structured, fast and easy to read, for readers and for AI tools.
A community speaker strongly advised putting everything you want cited into the raw, server-side rendered HTML, especially for AI systems that cannot render JavaScript yet.
Myth: your website is no longer relevant. Google's answer: keep content crawlable, well structured, fast and easy to read, for readers and for AI tools.
Gary Illyes said the common SEO advice to chunk content for AI systems is misunderstood: chunking is real, but it matters at the level of an AI model's context window.
Myth: optimise for AI over readers. Google's answer: optimise for people, with no need to obsess over precise keywords or AI phrasing, no need to chop content, and no need for llms.txt.
Gemini does not need content cut into small chunks of 100 or 200 words, Gary Illyes said, since a smaller book fits in its context window.
Myth: optimise for AI over readers. Google's answer: optimise for people, with no need to obsess over precise keywords or AI phrasing, no need to chop content, and no need for llms.txt.
The structured data Google processes is not fed very differently to AI Overviews and AI Mode: after cleaning and quality work, the same data goes to both the classic results page and the AI features.
AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
As far as the speaker knows, in most of Google's main AI uses a page's schema.org markup is not turned into text and put directly into the model's context; the data is first sorted out, checked for quality and indexed before it is passed on as grounding context.
Google's guide says new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup are not needed to appear in Search, and that such files neither harm nor help visibility because Google Search ignores them.
Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI features lists 'overfocusing on structured data' among the things site owners don't need to do: structured data is not required for generative AI search and no special schema.org markup is needed, though it remains worth using because it helps pages become eligible for rich results.
Google's guide says new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup are not needed to appear in Search, and that such files neither harm nor help visibility because Google Search ignores them.
Sites need no extra work to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode: both work on top of the existing web results, so what works for web results also works for the AI features.
AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on top of Search results: they are a different experience of the same content Google already has.
Users often assume AI is all-knowing and borderless, but AI is still language-dependent: if an AI answer is synthesized from the top results, a query in another language draws on a totally different set of data.
AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
Check AI Overviews and AI Mode with native-language queries in each target market, not with translated English keywords, and compare with the country breakdown of Search Console's generative AI performance report; topics where competitors are cited and you are not point to missing or weak local content.
Google's launch post for the Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (3 June 2026; rolled out to all sites worldwide by 31 August 2026) lists impressions, pages, countries, devices (Search only) and dates, and no click or query metrics.
AI Overviews and AI Mode use the same index structures and token-based snippets as classic web results, a point Google called important but not obvious.
AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
Google said that when AI Overviews or AI Mode run a query fan-out, the generated queries are sent to Google's Search index and documents come back with their snippets, which then feed the AI-generated answer (part of this passage is unclear in the recording).
Three reasons were given: generative AI features are built directly on the core ranking systems, query fan-out expands the original query to find related information, and generative AI features highlight content indexed by Google Search.
Google said that when AI Overviews or AI Mode run a query fan-out, the generated queries are sent to Google's Search index and documents come back with their snippets, which then feed the AI-generated answer (part of this passage is unclear in the recording).
Query fan-out means running several related searches at once to gather more results; a question about lawn weeds may also search herbicides and weed prevention.
Google said that when AI Overviews or AI Mode run a query fan-out, the generated queries are sent to Google's Search index and documents come back with their snippets, which then feed the AI-generated answer (part of this passage is unclear in the recording).
Google said the Gemini model lets Search understand the user's intent, and query fan-out then adds further queries to the first one to enrich the quality of the answer.
Google said that when AI Overviews or AI Mode run a query fan-out, the generated queries are sent to Google's Search index and documents come back with their snippets, which then feed the AI-generated answer (part of this passage is unclear in the recording).
John Mueller said Google uses the snippet as a way of building AI Overviews and AI Mode answers, so if a page forbids a snippet, Google cannot use that snippet for them.
In the presenter's observation, AI answers to Persian queries are written in Persian but cite some English sources; the presenter explained that Persian content on a topic is often thinner, of lower quality or less relevant, so the systems retrieve from languages with better content, which the presenter called cross-lingual retrieval.
Users often assume AI is all-knowing and borderless, but AI is still language-dependent: if an AI answer is synthesized from the top results, a query in another language draws on a totally different set of data.
Google's slide on how LLM features with grounding generally work showed a query going to both the search engine and an LLM, the search engine's results going to the LLM, the LLM generating fan-out queries that go back to the search engine, and the LLM returning answers with links.
AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
Google treats fan-out queries generated by the LLM the same way as queries typed by users, so understanding how normal queries work explains fan-out queries too.
Google said that when AI Overviews or AI Mode run a query fan-out, the generated queries are sent to Google's Search index and documents come back with their snippets, which then feed the AI-generated answer (part of this passage is unclear in the recording).
Because every system runs fan-out differently, Google advised understanding that fan-out happens but not overfocusing on individual fan-out queries or on how to rank for them.
Google's guide says creating separate content for every variation of how people might search, including fan-out queries, primarily to manipulate rankings or AI responses violates its scaled content abuse policy. It adds that its AI systems can understand a page's relevance even without an exact match to the query.
Google's quality talk said Google clarified that traditional spam techniques aimed at manipulating AI responses also violate its spam policies, and that Google can take action against them.
Google's guide says creating separate content for every variation of how people might search, including fan-out queries, primarily to manipulate rankings or AI responses violates its scaled content abuse policy. It adds that its AI systems can understand a page's relevance even without an exact match to the query.
AI Mode and AI Overviews are not rich results but standard search features: they need no structured data to function and work with the normal text results from Google's index.
AI Overviews and AI Mode use the same index structures and token-based snippets as classic web results, a point Google called important but not obvious.
Pages that do better in AI answers than in classic results do not refute Google's line that optimising for people is optimising for generative AI Search, since the comparison mixed Google's AI features with third-party LLMs; measure each surface separately, per page, before deciding what to change.
Optimising for people is optimising for generative AI Search.
Google's closing slide said AI on Google is just SEO: AI features on Google Search use exactly the same processes as traditional results, so no new acronym is needed, as none was for mobile-first indexing or structured data.
AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
A community speaker said llms.txt files are not necessary, citing a third-party study from summer 2026 (heard as Ahrefs') that looked at almost 40,000 sites over one month: 97% had no AI agent hits on the file, and those that had any got about two hits a month.
Myth: optimise for AI over readers. Google's answer: optimise for people, with no need to obsess over precise keywords or AI phrasing, no need to chop content, and no need for llms.txt.
AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on top of Search results: they are a different experience of the same content Google already has.
AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
Sites need no extra work to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode: both work on top of the existing web results, so what works for web results also works for the AI features.
Google's answer to 'SEO is dead, long live GEO' is not to worry about the name: good SEO is good GEO and AEO.
Sites need no extra work to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode: both work on top of the existing web results, so what works for web results also works for the AI features.
Three reasons were given: generative AI features are built directly on the core ranking systems, query fan-out expands the original query to find related information, and generative AI features highlight content indexed by Google Search.
Google's generative AI features in Search build on the traditional ways of searching, so query understanding also flows into AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Three reasons were given: generative AI features are built directly on the core ranking systems, query fan-out expands the original query to find related information, and generative AI features highlight content indexed by Google Search.
Google's marketing research talk reached the same advice as Search: optimise for people to win in generative AI search.
Optimising for people is optimising for generative AI Search.
Google's closing slide said AI on Google is just SEO: AI features on Google Search use exactly the same processes as traditional results, so no new acronym is needed, as none was for mobile-first indexing or structured data.
Google's answer to 'SEO is dead, long live GEO' is not to worry about the name: good SEO is good GEO and AEO.
AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on the Search infrastructure Google has used for 25 to 30 years and have very few processes of their own.
AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on the Search infrastructure Google has used for 25 to 30 years and have very few processes of their own.
AI Overviews and AI Mode use the same index structures and token-based snippets as classic web results, a point Google called important but not obvious.
Google warned that shiny new things, such as trying to work out fan-out queries, distract from the real mission of creating helpful content, since Search is just piping that connects users to information.
Because every system runs fan-out differently, Google advised understanding that fan-out happens but not overfocusing on individual fan-out queries or on how to rank for them.
Keep pages indexable and snippet-eligible, the whole technical requirement for AI features
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Spend no effort on llms.txt, AI text files or AI-specific markup for Google
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Structure content for readers instead of splitting it into small chunks for AI
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Track AI feature visibility in the Generative AI performance report
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Make JavaScript-generated content render quickly
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Do not generate large sets of low-value pages from templates, feeds or LLM output
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Myth: SEO is dead: AI search needs GEO, a new discipline.
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Myth: Cut your content into short, self-contained chunks so Google's AI can use it.
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