Every time search evolves, someone invents a new acronym and sells it as the latest discipline marketing teams need to master.
First it was SEO. Then SEM. Then content marketing, inbound, UGC, growth hacking… And now it’s AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). Both are being framed as urgent and presented as separate disciplines from SEO, but they aren’t.
The AI search strategy for Brands doesn’t makes the old SEO fundamentals obsolet.
What AI search actually does
Google’s AI Overviews and similar generative features don’t operate in isolation. They use RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) which pulls content from pages that already rank well and uses that as the basis for AI-generated answers.
If your content isn’t crawlable, indexed, and genuinely useful, an AI layer doesn’t fix that. AI search is downstream of the same systems that have always decided whether a brand gets found. Not a shortcut around them.
What the AEO/GEO crowd is selling
The advice circulating under these labels is a familiar mix: special files for AI crawlers, breaking content into artificial «chunks» for retrieval, rewriting copy around supposed AI-preferred phrasing, manufacturing third-party mentions to game citation odds…
Google’s own guidance is direct on this. None of it is necessary.
What actually moves the needle
Semantic HTML. Clear structure. Fast load times. Mobile responsiveness. Crawlable, publicly accessible pages.
Images deserve their own line here, because brands get this wrong constantly. Google’s crawlers don’t index CSS background images. If your product shot is loaded as a background-image in your CSS, it’s invisible to image search. You need a standard element with a source.
And if you’re running AI-generated product images on an ecommerce page, Google now expects the IPTC metadata declaring that. Skip it, and you’re not just missing an optimization.
None of this is new. It’s the baseline that was always supposed to be there.
Content still needs a point of view
Google does not prohibit AI-generated content. It prohibits the use of AI to mass-produce content that offer no added value (large-scale content abuse).
The distinction that matters is commodity versus non-commodity content. Commodity content is anything an AI could generate from common knowledge. Non-commodity content carries first-hand experience and a real point of view. One won’t show up. The other survives.
That’s the real brief, regardless of which acronym is fashionable this quarter.
The deeper issue
AEO/GEO hype works because it creates urgency. It’s the new layer that if you’re not running means you’re already behind. Useful for selling audits and retainers. Less useful for brands actually trying to get found.
The better question is simpler: does your digital presence meet the technical baseline Google has asked for all along? For most brands, the honest answer is no. Let’s fix that first.
Where this is going
Agentic browsing: AI systems navigating sites on behalf of users, is the next real shift worth watching. Standards like the Universal Commerce Protocol are early signals of infrastructure that will eventually matter.
But that’s a different conversation from what’s being sold under GEO today.
For the next twelve months, the best AI search strategy is still a well-executed SEO strategy. Technical implementation that doesn’t fight the crawler. Content with a genuine point of view, and images that are actually indexable and properly labeled.
If you’re working through that list and want a second pair of eyes on the technical side, that’s part of what I do. I’m a Digital Marketing Consultant working and helping brands in AI Visual Production, Google Ads and SEO.
