# Google's official AI guide: AEO is still SEO — and what Google says NOT to do

**Confidence: [H]** (Google primary source, 2026-05-15)

Google's first official "optimizing for generative AI in Search" guide states
AI features are "rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems" —
AEO/GEO is framed as SEO. Explicitly **not needed for Google**: llms.txt /
"AI text files", special AI markup, breaking content into chunks, rewriting
in "AI phrasing", inauthentic mention-building. **Recommended:** first-hand
non-commodity content, crawlable technically-sound pages, semantic
human-readable HTML, Merchant Center feeds, Google Business Profile.

**Caveat to keep:** the "don't chunk" claim is about _Google's_ systems.
Passage-level structure still demonstrably helps ChatGPT/Perplexity/Claude
retrieval ([[chunk-shape]]). Encode both views, don't flatten the nuance.

**Evidence:** https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide (2026-05-15)
