Google has moved generative AI optimisation (GEO) from industry whisper to official guidance. The search giant has now published formal documentation on how to optimize websites for generative AI features in Search—effectively legitimising GEO as a recognized part of search strategy rather than an informal practice.
The guidance is refreshingly practical: forget prompt hacks and keyword-stuffing. Google emphasizes conventional SEO fundamentals, original useful content, structured data markup, and ensuring your pages are technically accessible and retrievable by AI systems. In short, if your site ranks in traditional Search results and is easy for Google's crawlers to understand, it's already positioned to be cited by generative answers.
What this means for citation visibility: AI features in Search still depend on the core Search index. There is no separate "AI index." Your content gets cited because Google's generative systems retrieve and attribute it from the same indexed web that powers ranked results. That means citation opportunities remain tightly coupled to technical SEO, content quality, and topical authority—the same factors that have always mattered. The takeaway is simple: optimize for Search, and you're optimizing for AI citations. There are no shortcuts.