GEO optimization? I’ve been saying for months that it’s bullshit. Now Google is saying it too.
For the past few months, my phone has been ringing regularly with the exact same question. "Erwin, GEO optimization — do you guys do that too?" Or: "My website needs to be optimized for AI, can you handle that?"
My answer was always the same. Honest, and not what some people wanted to hear: that is largely bullshit.
Not because AI in search results is unimportant — quite the opposite. But because the idea that you need a special "AI trick" to be found simply doesn’t align with how those systems work. And recently, I no longer need a long explanation to back that up. Because Google has now confirmed it themselves.
You wouldn't cheat off the dumbest kid in class, would you?
Here is how I explain it to those clients, without the jargon.
Imagine an exam. You’re allowed to cheat. Who do you look at? The smartest kid in class — not the one sleeping in the back.
That’s exactly how those AI bots work. They don’t invent their answers out of thin air. They just crawl through the search results looking for an answer — just like you would. And logically, they give more weight to pages that rank highly. That high position is a signal to the bot: this is a reliable source, I can cheat off this one.
And don’t think a bot like that works creatively. An AI doesn’t invent domain names or URLs to then check if there happens to be something useful behind them. That’s not how it works. It starts from what already exists: the pages that are already found, indexed, and highly ranked. That is what it learns and trains from. If your page doesn't exist in the search results, it doesn't exist for the AI either.
So the question "how do I optimize for AI" is actually the wrong question. The real question is: am I high enough in the regular search results that an AI bot wants to cheat off me? And that is exactly what good SEO has always done.
Those sitting at the back of the class won't be found by some AI trick. They will be skipped — by both humans and bots.
What I was already telling those clients
My explanation over the phone always boiled down to this:
AI bots scrape the search results to look for answers, and they also use those pages to train themselves.
The higher you rank, the greater the chance that a bot will choose your page as a source.
There is no separate "AI layer" on top of your SEO. The ranking is the entryway.
If you perform poorly in Google right now, you won't suddenly become a chatbot's favorite source.
No llms.txt file will fix that. No chopping content into mini-blocks. No writing a hundred long-tail variations. Just this: make sure your website is good enough to be at the top.
No llms.txt file will fix that. No chopping content into mini-blocks. No writing a hundred long-tail variations. Just this: make sure your website is good enough to be at the top.
And then Google confirmed exactly that
A little later, Google published an official guide on optimizing for their generative AI features, such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. And honestly, I had to laugh a little when I read it. It was pretty much word-for-word what I had been telling people over the phone for months.
The core of Google's message: optimizing for AI search is simply optimizing for the search experience — and that is, and always will be, SEO. Their AI runs on the exact same search index, the same ranking systems, and the same quality assessments as regular results. The bot pulls relevant pages from that index and generates an answer from them. Exactly the "cheating off the smartest kid in class" concept I was talking about.
Google even went further and explicitly threw popular GEO hacks into the dumpster. Things you can ignore for Google Search:
llms.txt files and special markup — not necessary to appear in AI results.
"Chunkying" content into small AI blocks — Google understands multiple topics within a single page perfectly fine. There is no ideal page length.
Writing out long-tail variations for AI — the systems understand synonyms and intent, even without exact keywords. Mass-producing pages even falls under their spam policy.
Chasing fake mentions across the web — doesn't work, because the spam filters catch it.
Overly focusing on structured data — not required for AI, though it remains useful for regular rich results.
Another persistent misunderstanding: "I'm chatting about it, so the AI is learning about my business"
There is one misconception I hear regularly, and I want to single it out for a moment. People think they can "imprint" their business by asking different AI bots questions about their own company, or by telling the bot all kinds of things about themselves. As if you are training the AI that way.
That doesn't work. Yes, the bot will know it perfectly after that — but only in that specific chat, in that single conversation you are in. As soon as the conversation is over, it retains nothing from it. It disappears. None of it goes into the training data, and the next user who asks about your business won't benefit from it at all.
So no, chatting with ChatGPT about your brand for hours is not a GEO hack. It’s a conversation with a goldfish memory. Do you want an AI to truly know your business? Then that information needs to be on the open web, found, and indexed — right back to square one, right back to regular SEO.
Why I think this is a good development
What I find truly interesting about that Google guide is what they do emphasize instead: unique, non-generic content. Firsthand experience, original insights, a viewpoint that goes beyond the "7 tips for X" you can already find everywhere.
This makes sense because AI has created a problem that it now has to solve itself.
The internet is being flooded with generic, summarized AI content. Because of this, the rare things become more valuable: real-world experience, a personal opinion, a story that only you can tell because you lived it yourself.
And that is good news for the kind of companies we work with. It’s not the biggest website that wins, but the sharpest. A small, strong brand with a clear voice and real expertise has a clear edge here over a bloated content factory. That is exactly what our our approach is built on.
So: what should you actually do?
Geen geheime AI-trucs. Geen GEO-pakket dat een ander je probeert te verkopen. Gewoon:
Make sure your technical SEO is on point, so you get found and indexed in the first place — that’s how we approach SEO.
Write content that actually helps people, with your own unique angle.
Build a strong position in the regular search results — after all, that’s where the AI cheats from.
And ignore the LinkedIn guru trying to hustle you into buying an llms.txt file.
When an AI bot looks for an answer, it cheats off the best. So just make sure you are the best. The rest is bullshit.
Questions about your visibility — in Google as well as in AI? We’ll tell you honestly what works and what doesn't.
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