Google has published a new AI search guide, and its most quotable line is a bucket of cold water for the acronym industry: AEO and GEO are "still SEO."

The guide, reported by Search Engine Journal under the headline "Google's New AI Search Guide Calls AEO And GEO 'Still SEO'," addresses the cluster of new terms that vendors and consultants have minted since AI-generated answers arrived in search results. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) both emerged as labels for the work of getting content surfaced inside AI Overviews, chat-style answers, and other generative surfaces. Google's position, per the new documentation, is that this work does not constitute a new discipline. It is search engine optimization by another name.

That is a pointed message for a market that has spent the past two years selling GEO audits, AEO retainer packages, and "AI visibility" dashboards as distinct product lines. If the operator of the largest search engine says the underlying discipline is unchanged, buyers have a straightforward question for anyone pitching a premium AI-search service: what exactly is new here beyond the label?

The terminology question is not cosmetic. Search Engine Journal, along with much of the trade press, has covered the AEO and GEO wave closely as vendors positioned AI answer surfaces as a separate optimization target requiring separate budgets. Google's guide now gives publishers and in-house teams a documented basis to push back. The ranking fundamentals, the guide's framing suggests, carry over to AI-driven results.

For operators, the practical read is this: the deliverable did not change, only the surface did. Content that earns visibility in classic search results, the guide implies, is the same content positioned to be cited in AI-generated answers. Teams that maintained disciplined technical hygiene, structured data, and genuinely useful content before the AI wave do not face a new optimization problem. Teams that neglected those basics will not fix the gap by purchasing a rebranded service.

The skepticism cuts both ways. Google has its own incentive to downplay fragmentation: the company sells ads against its own AI surfaces and benefits from publishers treating its ecosystem as continuous rather than forked. A vendor-funded "GEO stack" is a competitive narrative; a unified SEO story keeps publishers optimizing for Google properties first.

Still, guidance from Google carries operational weight that marketing copy does not. When the search operator itself documents that AEO and GEO fall under SEO, procurement teams can write that into requirements. Agencies charging separately for AI answer optimization should expect to justify the split, or fold it into standard SEO scope.

The guide lands as AI answers occupy an expanding share of result pages, and as publishers track how often AI surfaces cite their domains. Those measurement conversations continue. What Google has now stated, in its own documentation, is that the optimization discipline behind them has one name, and it is an old one.

Search Engine Journal's coverage of the guide is available under the headline "Google's New AI Search Guide Calls AEO And GEO 'Still SEO.'"