Google Finally Puts It in Writing
Google has published its first official guide to optimizing for its generative AI features, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. The document, titled “Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search”, was announced on the Google Search Central Blog and now sits in a new Generative AI fundamentals section of Google’s documentation.
Much of it consolidates advice Google has given at conferences and in interviews over the past year. The difference is that it is now official documentation, which makes it the reference point for anyone deciding where to spend time and budget.
The Headline: AI Search Is Still SEO
Google’s position is unambiguous. It states that SEO best practices remain relevant because its generative AI features are rooted in its core ranking and quality systems. AI Overviews and AI Mode use techniques such as retrieval-augmented generation and query fan-out to pull content from the existing Search index.
In plain terms, if a page is not strong enough to rank in normal search, it is unlikely to be surfaced in an AI answer either.
What You Can Stop Worrying About
The guide is just as useful for what it rules out. Google says you do not need an llms.txt file, special AI markup, or Markdown versions of your pages for its AI features. Google may crawl those files, but it does not treat them specially.
That should save a lot of wasted effort. The things that do matter are familiar: valuable, original content that is not a commodity, a technically sound and crawlable site, and good local, shopping, image, and video content where relevant.
What You Should Do
Read the guide, then audit any “AI optimization” work against it. Anything that relies on AI-only files or machine-first formatting can be deprioritized. Put the time into making your best pages genuinely the best answer available. Our AI optimization team builds AI search visibility on exactly these principles.
