How to Show Up in AI Answers (And What to Stop Worrying About)
If you've been hearing more about AEO (answer engine optimization) lately and wondering whether you need a whole new strategy to show up in AI-generated search results, we want to give you a straight answer: probably not as much as people are selling you.
Google recently published an official guide on optimizing for its generative AI features, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. The headline finding is something Google employees have been saying at conferences for a while, but now it's in writing: from Google's perspective, optimizing for AI search is optimizing for search, period. They call it "still SEO." That's not a small thing. It means the fundamentals that have always mattered, credible content, good site structure, clear writing, and real expertise, still do the heavy lifting.
So before we get into what you should do, let's talk about what you can stop doing.
You don't need to create llms.txt files.
Google's guide explicitly says you don't need machine-readable AI text files or special markup to appear in generative AI results. If someone is selling you that service, ask them to show you proof it works on Google.
You don't need to "chunk" your content.
Breaking your pages into small fragments to make them easier for AI systems to digest is not recommended by Google. Their systems are designed to understand multiple topics on a single page and surface the relevant portion to the user.
You don't need to rewrite everything for AI.
Google's AI can handle synonyms and general meaning. Obsessively targeting every long-tail keyword variation for AI consumption is not a requirement.
You don't need special schema markup for AI results.
Keep using structured data as part of your overall SEO strategy because it helps with rich results, but there's no special schema that gets you into AI answers.
Now, here's what actually moves the needle.
Write content that only you could write.
Google draws a clear distinction between what they call "commodity content" and content with real, unique insight. A generic list of tips anyone could Google is less likely to be surfaced than something specific, grounded in real experience, or genuinely original. Think less "5 Ways to Improve Your Marketing" and more "What We Learned After Switching Our Client's Strategy Mid-Campaign."
Make sure your site is indexed and eligible for snippets.
You can't show up in AI Overviews if Google can't crawl and index your pages. Clean site structure, good page experience, and proper crawlability are the baseline.
Local businesses should keep their Google Business Profile up to date.
Google specifically calls out Business Profiles and Merchant Center feeds as factors in local and product visibility within AI responses.
We want to be honest with you about two things that many people aren't saying clearly enough.
AI mentions don't reliably drive website traffic.
When someone gets an answer from an AI Overview or AI Mode, they often don't click through to your site. They got what they needed. So if your goal is to increase site visits, AEO is not the direct lever. It's a visibility play, a brand presence play, but don't expect your analytics to reflect it.
Tracking AI mentions is genuinely difficult.
Unlike traditional search rankings, where you can run a report and see where you land, AI-generated results are highly personalized and conversational. Two people asking essentially the same question can get different answers. There's no clean dashboard for this yet. If someone tells you they can guarantee your placement in AI results, be skeptical.
The searches that pull in AI answers also tend to be phrased the way a real person would talk, not the way someone might type keywords into a search bar. That means the range of queries that could theoretically surface your content is wider, but also harder to predict or optimize systematically.
What we keep coming back to is this: the businesses that will do well in AI search are the ones doing good work and presenting it to their audience in specific, credible ways. Not because they cracked a new algorithm, but because they gave AI systems something worth surfacing.
That's always been the deal with search. It just looks a little different now.
Want to talk about AEO, GEO, SEO, or whatever three-letter acronym someone coins next week? We're in. Get in touch.
