Over the past few years I’ve had many people tell me SEO is dead or ask me if SEO is dead, only to be replaced by AI SEO (often referred to as “GEO” or “AEO”).
I’ve seen entire marketing departments get cut in favor of AI strategy and content, scrolled through countless YouTube videos proclaiming specific “hacks” and “techniques” were essential for AI SEO, and have even been advised to write more like AI or add “summarize with AI!” buttons to the top of webpages.
And as of May 2026, Google has finally come out and said what I’ve known all along…and you’ve known too, if you read this newsletter:
SEO isn’t dead.
And GEO (or AEO, or AI SEO) isn’t really…a thing.
What Google said (and what it means)
Google’s official blog post lays out exactly what is and isn’t different about SEO when it comes to AI search. I’m going to walk you through their key points, providing explanations along the way.
1. SEO is still relevant for AI-powered search
What Google said:
“The best practices for SEO continue to be relevant because our generative features on Google Search are rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems…from Google Search’s perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO.”
What this means:
Google is saying that its AI search tools, including AI Overviews and AI Mode, rely on the same core ranking structure as the “traditional” results. If something is high enough quality, and on a strong enough domain, to rank well in traditional search results, it’s good enough to appear in an AI answer.
What’s changed in SEO:
The Google announcement does emphasize something called “query fan-out,” which refers to topically related questions and keywords. This is important right now. In the past, a person might have done a search for question 1, read some answers, did a second search for related question 2, and so forth.
Today, AI SEO tools—particularly the chat ones, like AI Mode—run all of these potentially related topic searches at once behind the scenes. This means that you need to cover multiple related topics in one article or in different, linked articles, on your blog in order to provide good coverage and increase your chances of being selected and shown in an AI search result.
2. Content quality matters
What Google said:
“Creating content that people find unique, compelling, and useful will likely influence your website’s presence in generative AI search in the long run more than (anything else)…don’t just recycle what others on the internet have already said, or could easily be produced by a generative AI model.”
What this means:
Google’s laid it out in black and white: website content needs to be real, unique, helpful to people, and different than stuff that already exists online. Writing with AI, or like AI, is not at all what Google wants to see here. The Google Search team specifically calls out the benefit of content that:
- Contains a unique point of view from the author
- Is non-commodity content (aka not generic, and not just an endless sales pitch)
- Well organized and easy to read
- Enhanced with good images and videos
- Produced at a normal rate (i.e. not “10x scale content production” with AI)
What’s changed in SEO:
The biggest change from “traditional” SEO is that commoditized content doesn’t pack the punch it once did. This means that if you create a lot of generic listicles that trash your competitors (or barely touch on them) and promote your product/service/company as the answer to every possible need, that content won’t perform well. Similarly, generic content that doesn’t have a unique or personal take won’t do very well in search results anymore, either.
This has led a number of people to say that listicles—aka list-style articles—don’t work anymore. But they do! You just have to be sure you’re structuring your listicles in a way that meets Google’s current guidelines. If you’re not sure how to do this, my free No-Penalty Listicle Planner will walk you through the entire process of creating a quality, Google-approved listicle that works for SEO.
3. Technical SEO matters, but don’t stress
What Google said:
“Technical clarity ensures your content is ready for discovery and indexing, and all existing technical SEO best practices continue to be worthwhile…structured data isn’t required for generative AI search and there’s no special schema.org markup you need to add…you don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown to appear in generative AI search.”
What this means:
There aren’t any special tricks or files you need to do/create/add on your site. If you organize your pages well, link content together, and make sure your site is accessible by search engine crawlers, you’re on the right path. Basically…make sure your site’s technical SEO is sound and carry on as you were.
What’s changed in SEO:
Nothing’s actually changed, but it turns out that what a lot of people thought had changed wasn’t quite accurate. Over the past year, I’ve seen a lot of folks stressing out about creating llms.txt files to replace robots.txt files (Google is saying you don’t need to do this) and trying to add FAQ schema to every page with questions and answers on it.
The latter actually led to a lot of sites using FAQ schema incorrectly, to the point that Google’s stopped recognizing it at all. (So, if you’re thinking “what the hell is schema?” don’t worry about it too much.)
Questions and answers do matter for AI SEO purposes, but you don’t need to do anything super special. Just make sure your content answers searcher’s questions, and where it makes sense, add questions as a subhead and put the answer immediately after it in the paragraph text.
4. Write like you, not like AI
What Google says:
“There’s no requirement to break your content into tiny pieces for AI to better understand it. Google systems are able to understand the nuance of multiple topics on a page and show the relevant piece to users…you don’t need to write a specific way for generative AI search…in the end, make pages for your audience, not just for generative AI search.”
What this means:
Breaking your content up into super tiny paragraphs (we’re talking one sentence each), only using bulleted lists/charts/tables, rewriting your own words with AI, and so forth will not help you. AI-generated search prioritizes human-written content.
AI algorithms quite literally require human-created content in order to keep working. If everything on the internet becomes AI generated, and AI tools are trained on that content, the tools will actively get worse. This is a phenomenon called model collapse.
And please, for the love of all that is holy, do not put a “summarize with AI” button on the top of your blog posts. One, this gets people to leave your site immediately after landing on a page, and that sends a bad signal to search engines. It looks like people don’t want to stay on a page. And two, this has started to be flagged as potentially spammy behavior. Just don’t do it. People can put the link into ChatGPT or whatever themselves and ask for a summary if they really want one.
What’s changed in SEO:
Nothing, really. You can keep writing as you always were—as long as the content is structured correctly, meets audience search intent, and is easily readable by humans, it’s going to be a strong foundation for SEO purposes. And if you’re thinking, Emily, this is all well and good, but I don’t know what you mean by structure and search intent and how do I know if I’m writing correctly? I’ve got you covered there, too: my Simple Blogging System will show you what to do.
What to do if you already changed up your SEO strategy
A lot of businesses have already changed up their entire SEO strategy on the assumption that “SEO is dead” and GEO was something fundamentally different. If you did that, first off, know you aren’t alone—I’ve seen BIG companies do this, too.
But it is important that you pivot your processes back to a more traditional SEO approach, or at least one without “hacks” and extra code or files that are “just for LLMs.” Join me for a live, free webinar session on Tuesday, June 9, 2026—I’ll go over what a strong SEO strategy looks like right now and how you can better prepare your content and webpages for AI search…in the way that Google wants.
Sign up here and join me June 9 at 12pm Eastern:
