Google Says GEO Is Just SEO. Consultants Disagree. Shocking.
Google confirmed that AI search results are pulled from the same regular search index, meaning there is nothing special publishers need to do for AI search beyond standard SEO. This has not stopped consultants from selling AI search optimization as a distinct service, because businesses are lining up with cash asking for it.
The underlying principle here is what I call the 'phantom discipline' problem. When a new technology reuses an existing infrastructure, opportunists will package the old knowledge as new knowledge and charge accordingly. The mechanism is simple: Google's AI search reads from the same crawl index as classic search. So the optimization is the same optimization. The people telling you otherwise are selling you a label, not a method.
Google itself provided this clarification. The article is written by a practitioner with 25 years of hands-on SEO experience. The consultants selling GEO as a separate service are unnamed but described as having 'popped up' in response to business demand.
- Open Google Search Console for your website and review your current search performance report. Look at which queries already bring you traffic. Expected outcome: you will see the queries Google already associates with your content.
- Search for a few of those same queries in Google and look for any AI-generated overview or summary at the top of results. Expected outcome: you will notice whether your site appears in AI summaries using the same content that ranks in traditional results.
- If you do not appear in AI overviews, improve your content quality and structured data using standard SEO practices. Expected outcome: better traditional rankings and, by extension, better AI search visibility, because the source is the same index.