Anyone selling you an llms.txt file, content segmentation, or AI-specific schema as a path Quotes from the AI presentation been wrong for 18 months. Google said so.
But there is one wrinkle that needs to be ironed out. “Bad for Google Search” is not the same as “bad for AI agents.”
In the section answering the question of whether SEO is still relevant for AI generative search, Google’s analysis new optimization guide addresses AEO and GEO by name: “From a Google Search perspective, AI generative search optimization comes down to optimizing the search experience, and therefore always SEO. » Five tactics are named in the Mythbusting section as things you can ignore: AI machine-readable files like llms.txt, content slicing, AI-specific content rewriting, inauthentic mentions, and obsession with structured data. This is demystification, in Google’s own words.
Re-read these five, once for Google search and once for everywhere else.
The scope Google covered and the scope it didn’t cover
Google’s guide and everything AEO and GEO Game Manualis to have your content cited in an AI-generated response. AI Previews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity all have the same shape. Truly different reach is what happens when an autonomous agent doesn’t cite your website but acts on it.
The guide mentions it briefly. In the “Agent Experiences” section, Google acknowledges that “AI agents are autonomous systems that can perform tasks on behalf of people, such as booking a reservation or comparing product specifications” and that “browsing agents can access your website to gather the data they need to accomplish these tasks, such as analyzing visual renderings (like screenshots), inspecting the DOM structure, and interpreting the accessibility tree. Google points to a separate document on web.dev for agent-friendly UX templates.
What the guide doesn’t address is whether the five tactics it debunked for citation scoping could still be useful for agent scoping acting on a website. This is the unfinished question. Read each of these five tactics twice: once for quote scope where Google’s debunking is correct, and once for action scope where the answer differs depending on tactic and use case.
LLMs.txt and machine-readable files for AI
For citations in Google Search, Googlebot reads your HTML and ignores the llms.txt file entirely. An llms.txt file does not change what is cited in AI previews or AI mode, and no consultant should charge you for one as a citation tactic.
For the scope of the action, the concept of “website manual for AI agents” is reasonable. An autonomous agent browsing your website to perform a task on behalf of a user could presumably benefit from a curated index whose content covers what features, what API endpoints exist, what workflows are documented where. The principle of having a machine-readable map for agents who need to act, not just recover, holds water.
But llms.txt itself is not yet the widely adopted standard for this. None of the large platforms whose agents would consume it committed to reading it as a mechanism of discovery. The concept may prove useful. The specific file format might end up becoming the standard, or another format might emerge, or the question might be resolved in an entirely different way.
What is clear: don’t put an llms.txt on your website because someone told you it would help your AI Overview citations. An llms.txt file will not change your AI Overview citation count. If you have another reason to publish a machine-readable manual for autonomous agents reading your documentation, that’s a different decision, and the deployment data doesn’t yet exist to do so with confidence.
Rewriting AI-specific content is an eye-opener
For citations in Google Search, rewriting content specifically for AI insights is treated by Google’s quality systems as low-effort content. Rewriting for AI is an eye-opener, not a tactic.
For the scope of the action, the framing is wrong from the outset. Writing specifically for AI is not the right framework. The right framework is to write clearly for any reader, human or machine. Structured content for extraction (answer first, quotable specificity, modular blocks) helps every reader, including the autonomous agent reader. This is the Machine-centric architecture position, and it is the discipline of content that survives both scopes.
The same logic applies to the next three tactics on Google’s list.
Chunk of content, inauthentic mentions, and obsession with structured data
Content grouping for AI follows AI-specific rewriting logic. Breaking your content into small chunks specifically for AI is not a good decision, and creating modular content blocks for easy-to-retrieve extraction is a content discipline that helps any reader. Google systems natively manage multi-topic pages.
Inauthentic notices apply regardless of their scope. Fake brand endorsements, link buying, and manipulated quotes are not suitable for any reader or agent recovery system. Google’s debunking here is closer to a statement of ethics than a question of scope. Manipulating recovery via false signals was a violation of guidelines two decades before someone invented GEO in an attempt to disrupt the SEO tool scene.
The obsession with structured data is the most easily misinterpreted of the five. Google hasn’t said to stop using the schema. The guide states that there is no special AI pattern and that focusing too much on the pattern as a citation lever is a mistake. Schema.org’s standard markup is still useful for entity recognition, knowledge graph identity, agent-readable product data for agent-as-buyer flows and the foundation of machine-readable identity in general. THE Ahrefs study published May 11, 2026 (1,885 pages adding schema, no significant increase in citations on Google’s AI Previews, AI Mode, or ChatGPT) measured a narrower question than the title suggests. Schema is now table stakes identity infrastructure. What doesn’t work is setting it up in month six and expecting an increase in citations.
What to do about Google’s AI Optimization Guide
Ask yourself two questions after reading Google’s new guide.
Are you paying someone for tactics on Google’s debunked list? Stop.
Do you have visibility into how autonomous agents are reading your website outside of Google Search? That’s probably not the case, and neither is anyone else right now.
Read Google’s guide as authoritative for what it covers and continue reading the rest of the web for what it doesn’t do.
More resources:
This article was originally published on No hacks.
Featured image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock
