AI Search / GEO Optimization (May 2026)

Primary Source: Google's AI Optimization Guide

Google's official position, published under Search Central docs:

"From Google Search's perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO."

Read references/google-ai-optimization-guide.md for the full synthesis, myth-busting list (llms.txt, chunking, AI-rephrasing, mention-farming, all rejected by Google as ineffective), and the Who/How/Why test for content quality.

Audits should frame GEO findings as SEO fundamentals applied to AI-search surfaces, not as a separate optimization discipline. When community recommendations contradict Google's primary source, defer to Google and note the contradiction in the report.