Every few months, a new acronym lands in the SEO industry and the noise starts immediately. GEO. AEO. LLM SEO. AI search optimisation. Each one comes with its own set of consultants, tools, and frameworks — all suggesting that the rules have fundamentally changed and that what worked before is now obsolete.
In June 2026, Google's own VP of Search stepped in and addressed it directly. Brendon Kraham, VP of Search and Commerce for Global Ads Solutions at Google, published a piece on Think with Google titled "Good SEO is good GEO" — and it is one of the clearest, most useful things Google has put into writing in years.
I have been telling clients this for months. Now that it is coming from Google at VP level, it gives us a clean, authoritative framework to point to. In this post, I am breaking down each of Kraham's five points and translating what they actually mean for businesses and SEO strategy in 2026.
The best formula for success in AI Search is the same formula for success in Search: foundational SEO. Our new generative AI features are rooted in the same core ranking and quality systems as traditional Search.
Brendon Kraham, VP of Search and Commerce Global Ads Solutions, Google — Think with Google, June 2026
Before we get into the five points, one number is worth noting: Google recorded an all-time high in Search queries in Q1 2026 — confirmed on the Alphabet earnings call. AI is not killing search. It is expanding it. More people are searching, not fewer. That context matters for how you read everything that follows.
Google's 5 Points on AI Search — And What They Mean for Your Business
Do Not Worry About the New Names — Good GEO, AEO, LLM SEO is Good SEO
The AI Mode and AI Overviews that dominate Google Search in 2026 are built directly on top of the same core ranking systems that have always powered organic search. They retrieve content from the same search index. They evaluate quality using the same signals. There is no hidden "AI channel" running a different algorithm that requires a separate strategy.
This is the most commercially important thing Kraham says in the entire piece — because it means that money being spent on new "GEO" or "AEO" services is largely being spent on rebranded traditional SEO, or worse, on tactics that do not map to any real ranking system at all.
Do Not Optimise for Bots — Optimise for People
Kraham explicitly calls out three specific tactics that are wasted effort for Google Search in 2026:
- Keyword-stuffed copy written for algorithms — Google's systems now understand natural language at a level that makes this counterproductive. Unnatural phrasing designed to match a query pattern is detectable and treated accordingly.
- Content chunked into artificial snippets for AI — Breaking content into tiny, artificially formatted pieces specifically to feed LLMs does not improve your visibility in Google's generative features. It just makes your content worse for humans.
- LLMs.txt and special AI text files — Google has confirmed these are unnecessary for Google Search. You can stop worrying about them entirely, at least for Google's surfaces.
The practical audit implication here is significant. When reviewing a client's content, anything that reads like it was written to match a query rather than to genuinely answer one is now a red flag. AI systems — including the ones powering Google's generative features — are better at detecting this than any previous algorithm iteration. The content that performs is content written for the person asking the question, not the algorithm processing it.
Do Not Create Generic Content — Prioritise Your Unique Perspective
This is the point I push hardest with any business we work with. The internet in 2026 is saturated with content — much of it AI-generated, most of it generic, all of it saying roughly the same thing with different words. Kraham calls this "commodity content" and explicitly contrasts it with what actually performs: noncommodity content.
His example is instructive. A local running store that creates a detailed video explaining why a specific customer's shoe structure caused it to collapse prematurely — that is noncommodity content. It is specific. It comes from real expertise. It answers a question that nobody else's content answers in that way. No AI-generated article and no "Top 10 Running Shoe Tips" post gets pulled into an AI answer in place of that.
Kraham also notes that Google Business Profile and Merchant Center data feeds directly into AI responses for local businesses and product searches. For any business serving local customers, keeping the GBP complete and active is not just a Maps ranking tactic — it is how you appear in AI-generated local recommendations as well.
Do Not Forget Your Website — Build a Great Web Experience
One of the most common misconceptions I encounter with clients in 2026 is the assumption that if AI is doing the answering, the website becomes less important. Kraham addresses this directly. The website does not become less important when AI drives the discovery — it becomes more important, because the visitors who arrive from AI surfaces are more informed and more intent-driven than typical organic visitors.
Someone who arrives at your dental clinic's website after an AI Overview recommended you has already done their evaluation. They read your star rating, the AI-generated summary of your clinic, and they chose to click through. They are closer to booking than almost any other type of visitor. If your website is slow, hard to navigate on mobile, or unclear about how to book — you are losing a high-value conversion at the final moment.
Kraham's checklist for a website that works in the AI search era is, notably, identical to what good web design has always required: fast loading across all devices, easy navigation, clear main content, relevant images and video, and a seamless path to conversion. Nothing new. Everything important.
Do Not Get Distracted by Noisy Metrics — Focus on Business Goals
As AI has expanded in search, a new category of tools has emerged selling "AI visibility scores" — metrics purporting to show how often your brand is mentioned or cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or AI Overviews. Kraham is direct about this: Google does not evaluate third-party SEO tools or vendors, and they have no access to Google's internal metrics. Third-party AI citation counts are not measuring what they claim to measure.
The measurement framework Kraham recommends is the same one that has always served businesses well: measure what actually affects revenue. For SEO, that means tracking leads, form submissions, calls, and bookings — not impressions, not citation counts, not AI visibility scores. The reporting tools that matter are Google Search Console (which has now begun rolling out new performance reports showing impressions from AI features) and, for retailers, Merchant Center.
The Summary Google Actually Published
Kraham ends his piece with five takeaways, and they are worth listing because they are clean, unambiguous, and come with the authority of being published directly by Google:
SEO is the best optimisation strategy for AI Search. No separate playbook needed.
Noncommodity, expert content — built on first-hand experience — is what gets surfaced in AI answers.
Do not game the system or optimise for bots. Write for people. Google's systems understand language like a human does.
Focus on great web experiences. The website is still where conversions happen — and AI-referred visitors are high intent.
Business goals — leads, bookings, revenue — are the best indicators of AI Search performance. Measure those, not vanity metrics.
What This Means for How We Work at Wevlopers
Kraham's piece does not change what we do. It validates it. Everything he outlines — foundational GBP optimisation, genuine content built on real expertise, fast and mobile-friendly websites, NAP consistency, measuring actual business outcomes — is exactly the work we have been doing with clients across India.
What it does change is the conversation. When a client asks whether they need a new "AI SEO" strategy, we can now point them to Google's own VP of Search and Commerce saying the answer is no — your existing SEO, done properly, is the strategy. When a client wants to spend time on LLMs.txt or chunking content for bots, we can tell them Google has officially confirmed that is wasted effort. When a client is seduced by an AI citation score in a vendor report, we can remind them that those metrics have no access to Google's internal systems and that the only number that matters is how many new customers SEO is generating.
The bottom line is the same as it has always been: help people find what they are looking for, answer their questions better than anyone else, make it easy to become a customer when they arrive. The algorithm — traditional or AI-powered — has always rewarded that. In 2026, it rewards it more than ever.
At Wevlopers, we help businesses build the SEO foundation that performs in both traditional search and the AI-powered search era — without chasing acronyms or buying into tactics that Google itself has confirmed are unnecessary. If you want to know whether your current SEO is built on the right foundation, a free audit is where we start.
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