Saw Google's doc on optimising for generative AI in Search and honestly, thought I was missing something. Turns out it's just crawlability, indexability, semantic HTML, solid content, authority - all the usual stuff. They even flat-out say optimising for AI search is still just about the search experience. what really got me was the callout on llms.txt and content chunking: don't bother. that alone should kill a lot of the noise floating around.
the bigger story here is what this means for the whole GEO/AEO space. People have been building entire pitches around this as a new discipline, but if Google's own guidance says fundamentals haven't changed, it's hard not to see it as repackaged traditional SEO with better branding. I've had conversations with fellow creators and agency folks who went deep down that rabbit hole thinking they were missing a secret new tactic - only to realise it was just well-structured, authoritative content.
The RAG clarification is the only genuinely useful technical bit: it confirms pages need to be indexed and snippet-eligible to appear in AI responses. So technical foundations still rule. Curious whether anyone here actually changes their approach after reading this, or does it just confirm what you were already doing? For me, it validates focusing on building genuine authority and relationships rather than chasing new hype.
