What Google Actually Says About Optimising for AI Search

The internet is awash with advice on "AI SEO." Every week brings a new acronym, GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation), AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation), and a fresh list of "hacks" promising to get your website cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews. Much of it is confident. Much of it is also wrong, at least where Google is concerned.

I know, because I've spent 14 years doing Wix SEO, and I've watched this hype cycle build. So when Google published its own official guidance on how generative AI search works, I read all of it, carefully. This post is what it actually says, in plain English, including the parts that contradict popular GEO advice, and yes, including a couple of things I've recommended myself. Because the honest version is more useful to you than the hype, and, as it happens, being honest is exactly what Google says works.

If you run a Wix site (or any site) and you want to be found as AI reshapes search, this is what genuinely matters, and what you can safely ignore.

The single most important thing Google says

Let me start with the finding that matters more than everything else combined, because Google states it plainly: the same foundational SEO that wins in normal Google Search is what wins in generative AI search. There is no separate, secret "AI SEO." The levers are the same.

That's a big claim, so let me be precise about it. Google's guidance says that creating content people find "unique, compelling, and useful" will influence your presence in generative AI search "in the long run more than any of the other suggestions." Not schema. Not special files. Not clever formatting. Content.

For a lot of businesses chasing GEO hacks, that's a genuinely liberating message: you don't need to learn a new discipline. You need to do the thing good SEO has always required, be genuinely useful, and be technically findable. Everything else in this post flows from that.

What Google says ACTUALLY helps (do these)

Here's what Google's official guidance says genuinely improves your visibility in AI search. These are the things worth your time.

1. Create unique, non-commodity, first-hand content

This is the heart of it. Google draws a sharp line between two kinds of content:

**Commodity content** is common-knowledge material that could have come from anyone, or been produced by an AI model itself. Google's own example is telling: something like "7 Tips for First-Time Homebuyers." It restates what's already everywhere. It adds nothing.

**Non-commodity content** brings genuine, first-hand expertise or experience. Google's example again is instructive: "Why We Waived the Inspection & Saved Money: A Look Inside the Sewer Line." That's a real, lived, specific perspective that no one else, and no AI, could produce by summarising the web.

Why does this matter so much for AI search? Because generative AI systems look at many sources, and a unique point of view stands out. A first-hand review, a specific case study, an expert take grounded in real experience, these are the things AI has reason to surface and cite. A summary of existing content is just noise the model already has.

For Wix site owners, the practical takeaway is genuinely important: **stop writing generic "top tips" content and start writing from your actual experience.** If you run a business, you have knowledge no competitor and no AI possesses, what really goes wrong, what surprised you, what you'd tell a client that isn't on any other website. That's the content that earns visibility in AI search. It's also, not coincidentally, harder to write, which is exactly why it's valuable.

2. Write for humans, and organise it well

Google is refreshingly blunt here: write content for your human audience, make it well written and easy to follow. People appreciate pages organised into clear paragraphs and sections, with headings that help them navigate. That's it. There's no special AI-formatting requirement, just good, readable structure that serves a reader.

This connects to a broader principle Google returns to repeatedly: focus on what your visitors would enjoy, find helpful, and feel satisfied with. Google even offers a single test you can apply to any decision about your site: "Is this content that my visitors would find satisfying?" If yes, you're on the right track. Their systems, they say, are built to connect people with exactly that kind of useful information.

3. Add high-quality, relevant images and video

Generative AI search features can surface images and video, not just links, which means more ways for your site to appear. Google's advice: where it makes sense, support your text with high-quality, relevant images and videos, following standard image SEO and video SEO best practices. If you're already optimising your media properly (descriptive alt text, sensible file sizes, relevant content), you're already optimising for AI search. No extra step required.

4. Build and maintain a clear technical structure

This is the foundation everything else sits on, because Google's AI systems access your content the same way Search does. If Search can't find, crawl, and index your pages, AI search can't use them. The essentials:

**Be indexable and snippet-eligible.** To appear in Google's generative AI features, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet, meeting Google's Search technical requirements. If your page is blocked, noindexed, or otherwise ineligible, it simply can't appear, however good the content.

**Be crawlable.** Google's AI models use publicly accessible, crawlable content to learn patterns and ground their responses. Make sure your content is genuinely crawlable, not hidden behind blocks or broken settings.

**Handle JavaScript properly.** Google can process content in JavaScript as long as it isn't blocked, but JavaScript-heavy sites (which includes many Wix sites) are more complex to get right. Follow JavaScript SEO best practices so your content is actually readable, not stuck behind rendering that crawlers can't process.

**Provide a good page experience.** Display well on all devices, reduce latency, and make it easy for people to tell your main content apart from everything else on the page.

**Reduce duplicate content.** Duplicate pages are a poor experience and can waste crawl resources on URLs you don't care about. Tidy them where you can.

None of this is new. It's the technical SEO you should already be doing. But Google is explicit that it remains the core of AI-search visibility, get the foundations wrong and nothing else matters.

5. Sort your local and product details

Where relevant, AI responses can include local business information and product listings. Google's guidance: use Google Business Profile for local details and Merchant Center for products, and they can help you appear in both AI responses and regular Search results. For a local business, a properly set up and maintained Google Business Profile is one of the most concrete, high-impact things you can do, and it's often overlooked.

6. Measure it properly, in Search Console

Google has a Generative AI performance report in Search Console showing how your content performs in generative AI features on Search and Discover. This is the legitimate way to measure your AI-search visibility. And Google adds a pointed warning worth repeating: be wary of third-party tools claiming to use "internal" Google metrics or promising ranking success. No third-party tool has access to Google's internal ranking or AI systems. Use tools if they help your workflow, but judge their advice against Google's official guidance, not their marketing.

What Google says you can IGNORE (the GEO myths)

Now the part that will surprise people, and the part I promised to be honest about. Google directly addresses the popular GEO/AEO "hacks" circulating online, and says several of them simply don't work for Google Search. Here they are.

Myth 1: You need an llms.txt file

You'll have seen the advice everywhere: create an llms.txt file, a plain-text summary of your site for large language models, to help AI understand and cite you. I've recommended versions of this myself. Here's what Google actually says: you don't need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files, or special markup to appear in Google Search, including its generative AI features, because Google Search doesn't use them. Google Search ignores them.

Let me be precise, because precision matters here. Google isn't saying llms.txt is harmful, it explicitly says it's "completely fine" to create and maintain one, and that doing so won't help or harm your Google visibility. And crucially, Google is only speaking for *Google*. Other AI systems (ChatGPT, Perplexity, and similar) may use these files. So an llms.txt isn't wrong, and it may help you with non-Google AI engines. But if anyone tells you an llms.txt will get you cited in Google's AI Overviews, that's not what Google says. It won't.

This is exactly the kind of nuance the hype flattens. The honest position: llms.txt is optional, harmless, potentially useful for non-Google AI, and irrelevant to Google's AI. Set your expectations accordingly.

Myth 2: You need special schema markup for AI

This one is everywhere, and it's central to a lot of "GEO" pitches, including things I've said. So I'll be straight: Google states that structured data is not required for generative AI search, and there's no special schema.org markup you need to add for it.

Here's the important nuance, because this is where honesty really counts. Google does say you should keep using structured data as part of your overall SEO strategy, because it helps you become eligible for rich results in Google Search. So schema is genuinely worth doing. But it is worth doing for rich results (and for non-Google AI engines that may use it), not because it's the lever that gets you cited by Google's AI. It isn't.

If you take one thing from this section: schema is good SEO, keep doing it, but be sceptical of anyone selling schema as a magic key to Google's AI Overviews specifically. That's not how Google says it works.

Myth 3: You should "chunk" your content into tiny pieces

A popular GEO tactic is breaking content into small, discrete chunks so AI can "understand" it better. Google says there's no such requirement. Its systems can understand multiple topics on a page and surface the relevant piece to a user. Sometimes shorter pages work well; sometimes longer ones do. There's no ideal page length. Write for your audience and subject matter, not for an imagined AI parser.

Myth 4: You should rewrite your content specifically for AI

Another common piece of advice: rewrite everything in a special "AI-friendly" way, packed with long-tail keyword variations and every phrasing someone might use. Google says you don't need to. Its AI systems understand synonyms and general meaning, and can connect people to your content even when it doesn't use their exact words. You don't have to capture every variation. You have to be genuinely relevant.

Myth 5: You should chase "mentions" across the web

There's a school of GEO thought that says you must accumulate mentions everywhere, because AI surfaces what's said about you across the web. Google's response is careful: yes, its AI features can show what's being said about products and services across blogs, videos, and forums, but seeking inauthentic mentions "isn't as helpful as it might seem." Google's ranking systems focus on high-quality content, and other systems block spam; its AI features depend on both. In other words, manufactured mentions get filtered. Genuine reputation, earned through quality, is what counts.

Myth 6: More pages for every query variation

Finally, the temptation to create a separate page for every possible way someone might search, every question, every "fan-out" query. Google is explicit that doing this primarily to manipulate rankings or AI responses violates its scaled content abuse spam policy. And it's ineffective anyway: a high quantity of pages doesn't make a site higher quality or more relevant. Google's systems, it says, have improved at understanding relevance even without exact query-to-page matches. Quality over quantity, always.

So what does this mean for GEO and AEO? An honest reckoning

If you've read this far, you might be wondering whether GEO and AEO are simply nonsense. That's not quite the honest conclusion, and I want to be precise, because precision is the whole point of this post.

Google's guidance is about **Google's** AI, its AI Overviews and generative features in Google Search. For those, the message is clear: the special GEO tactics (llms.txt, AI-specific schema, chunking, rewriting for AI) don't help. What helps is unique content and technical soundness.

But the wider AI landscape is bigger than Google. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other systems crawl and cite the web in their own ways, and Google can't speak for them. Some of them may well use structured data, may reference llms.txt, may weigh entity signals and third-party mentions differently. So the honest position on GEO is this: it isn't a scam, but it's frequently mis-sold. Much of what's marketed as "getting you into Google's AI" simply won't, and Google has now said so plainly. Where GEO tactics have value, it's largely for non-Google AI engines and for the rich results that good schema earns you.

The uncomfortable truth for a lot of the GEO industry is that the single best thing you can do to be cited by AI, all AI, is the least glamorous: create genuinely expert, first-hand, useful content, and make sure it's technically findable. That's not a hack. It's just good work. And it's what Google, in its own words, says matters most.

What this means for your Wix site specifically

Wix sites have particular characteristics worth addressing in light of all this.

**JavaScript rendering.** Wix relies heavily on JavaScript. Google says it can process JavaScript content as long as it isn't blocked, but that JavaScript-heavy sites are more complex to get right. In practice, this means making sure your important content and information are genuinely accessible to crawlers, not stuck behind rendering issues. It's one of the more technical aspects of Wix SEO, and it's worth getting right, because if a crawler can't read your content, neither Google Search nor its AI can use it.

**Content quality is your biggest lever.** Because so much Wix SEO advice focuses on technical tweaks, it's easy to miss the headline: your content is what matters most. A Wix site with genuinely expert, first-hand content will outperform a technically perfect site full of commodity filler. If you do one thing, make your content genuinely worth reading.

**Your Google Business Profile.** If you're a local Wix business, your Google Business Profile is one of the most concrete things you can optimise, and it feeds both local Search and AI responses.

**Schema is still worth doing, framed honestly.** Add structured data for the rich results it can earn you, and because non-Google AI engines may use it. Just don't expect it to be your ticket into Google's AI Overviews; that's earned through content and technical quality.

**Reduce duplicate content.** Wix sites can accumulate duplicate or leftover pages (old versions, unused templates). Tidy them, they waste crawl resources and muddy your signals.

How to audit your own content against Google's guidance

Reading the principles is one thing; applying them is another. Here's a practical, honest checklist you can run against your own site, page by page. It's built directly from what Google says matters.

**Is this page commodity or non-commodity content?** Read the page and ask: could this have been written by anyone, or produced by an AI summarising the web? If yes, it's commodity content, and it's unlikely to earn AI-search visibility no matter how well optimised. If it contains genuine first-hand experience, specific detail, or expert judgement that only you could provide, it's non-commodity, and it has a real chance. Be ruthlessly honest here. Most "content" on most sites is commodity, which is precisely why genuinely original content stands out.

**Does it bring a unique point of view?** Google specifically values a distinct perspective. Does your page say something others don't, or does it restate the consensus? A page that argues a considered position, shares a real result, or reveals something learned through experience is far stronger than one that hedges and summarises.

**Would a real visitor be satisfied?** Apply Google's own test: after reading this, would a visitor feel their question was genuinely answered, that their time was well spent? If you suspect they'd bounce back to the search results still looking, the page needs work, and that's a content problem, not a technical one.

**Can a crawler actually read it?** Test it plainly. Is the page indexed? Is it eligible for a snippet? On a JavaScript-heavy platform like Wix, is the important content genuinely present and readable, not stuck behind rendering a crawler can't process? If the content isn't accessible, none of the quality matters, because nothing can use it.

**Is it well organised for a human?** Clear headings, sensible paragraphs, a logical flow. Not for an AI parser, for a person. Google is explicit that human readability is the goal.

**Are the media pulling their weight?** Are your images and video high-quality, relevant, and properly optimised (descriptive alt text, sensible sizes)? Or are they decorative filler? Relevant media is another way to appear in AI results; irrelevant media is just weight.

Run those six questions across your key pages and you'll have a genuinely useful, honest picture, one grounded in Google's actual guidance rather than GEO folklore.

Why experience (real E-E-A-T) is the thread running through all of this

If you look closely at Google's guidance, one idea underpins nearly all of it: experience. The unique point of view Google prizes comes from experience. The non-commodity content it rewards is content only someone with real experience could write. The reason a first-hand review beats a summary is experience. This is E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) in action, and it's more relevant to AI search than any technical tactic.

Here's why that's genuinely good news, especially for smaller businesses and individual experts. You cannot out-hack a competitor on experience. A large company can hire people to churn out commodity content and add every technical bell and whistle. What it often cannot do is replicate the specific, hard-won, real-world knowledge of someone who does the work. If you're a specialist, a practitioner, a business owner who genuinely knows your field, your experience is your unfair advantage, and it's exactly what Google's AI-search guidance rewards.

The practical implication is a mindset shift. Instead of asking "what keywords should I target?" or "what schema should I add?", ask "what do I know that no one else does, and how do I put it on the page clearly?" That question, answered honestly and repeatedly, is a better AI-search strategy than any list of hacks. It's slower. It's harder. It doesn't come in a tidy checklist you can buy. But it's what actually works, and it compounds over time in a way that hacks never do.

A word on trust, and why honest advice matters here

There's a meta-point worth making, because it's part of why this post exists. The AI-search field is full of confident advice, and a lot of it is wrong, or at least mis-sold. Tactics are marketed as secrets. Tools claim access to metrics they don't have. GEO "experts" promise citations in Google's AI that Google itself says aren't earned that way.

In that environment, the most valuable thing anyone can offer is honesty, including honesty about their own past advice. I've recommended llms.txt. I've pitched schema in the context of AI visibility. Reading Google's guidance carefully means being straight that, for Google's AI specifically, those aren't the levers they're often sold as, while being equally straight that they retain genuine value for rich results and for non-Google AI engines. Precision, not hype.

That matters for you as a site owner because the cost of following bad AI-search advice isn't just wasted effort, it's opportunity cost. Every hour spent chunking content or crafting the perfect llms.txt for Google is an hour not spent writing the genuinely expert content that actually moves the needle. The hype doesn't just fail to help; it actively distracts from what works.

The honest bottom line

Here's everything above, distilled.

To be found in AI search, including Google's, do the things Google actually says matter: **create unique, first-hand, non-commodity content**; **keep a clean, crawlable, indexable technical structure**; **provide a genuinely good page experience**; **add high-quality images and video**; **sort your local and product details**; and **measure your progress in Search Console**, not through third-party tools claiming secret Google metrics.

You can safely ignore, at least where Google is concerned, the fashionable GEO hacks: **llms.txt, AI-specific schema, content chunking, AI-specific rewriting, manufactured mentions, and mass pages for every query variation.**

And if you take away a single principle, take this one, which is Google's own: focus on what your visitors would find genuinely helpful and satisfying. Everything else follows from that. It's not the exciting answer the GEO industry wants to sell you. But it's the true one, and in a field full of hype, being able to trust the advice you're given is worth more than any hack.

If you'd like help applying this to your Wix site, genuinely useful content, sound technical structure, honest AI-search foundations, that's exactly what I do. You can get in touch here, read more about my Wix SEO services, or explore the free Wix SEO course. And if you want to go deeper on the data behind Wix SEO, take a look at the State of Wix SEO 2026 report.