Google Says To Optimize For Humans, Not For AI

Since AI overviews have taken over search results and reduced the amount of clicks going to traditional search results, a debate has emerged within the SEO community. While one half of the community insists that the rise of AI calls for an entirely new approach to website optimization, others have cautioned that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. 

Now, two leading figures from Google have chimed in with a lengthy discussion on AI, how it is impacting search, and whether you need to be doing anything new to improve your visibility in AI overviews. 

Do You Need To Be Doing Anything New To Optimize For AI Search?

In a recent episode of the Search Off The Record podcast, Google’s Danny Sullivan and John Mueller spoke about AI and how it has changed search (and how it hasn’t). While they concede that it feels like search has changed significantly over the past couple years, the rise of artificial intelligence in search doesn’t actually call for any changes to how you optimize your website. 

Instead, they say that AI overviews use many of the same signals that were being used by the search engine.

To start the discussion, Jonn Mueller asked:

“So everything kind of around AI, or is this really a new thing? It feels like these fads come and go. Is AI in fad? How do you think?”

To which, Danny Sullivan said:

“Oh gosh, my favorite thing is that we should be calling it LMNOPEO because there’s just so many acronyms for it. It’s GEO for generative engine optimization or AEO for answer engine optimization and AIEO. I don’t know. There’s so many different names for it.

I used to write about SEO and search. I did that for like 20 years. And part of me is just so relieved. I don’t have to do that aspect of it anymore to try to keep up with everything that people are wondering about.

And on the other hand, you still have to kind of keep up on it because we still try to explain to people what’s going on. And I think the good news is like, There’s not a lot you actually really need to be worrying about.

It’s understandable. I think people keep having these questions, right? I mean, you see search formats changing, you see all sorts of things happening and you wonder, well, is there something new I should be doing? Totally get that.

And remember, we, John and I and others, we all came together because we had this blog post we did in May, which we’ll drop a link to or we’ll point you to somehow to it, but it was… we were getting asked again and again, well, what should we be doing? What should we be thinking about?

And we all put our heads together and we talked with the engineers and everything else. So we came up with nothing really that different.”

Google’s Systems Prioritize The Best Content For Humans

According to Danny Sullivan, the reason you don’t need new strategies to optimize for overviews is that Google’s AI systems aim to surface the best content for human users – the same as Google’s traditional search systems. 

As Sullivan explained:

“And when it comes to all of our ranking systems, it’s about how are we trying to reward content that we think is great for people, that it was written for human beings in mind, not written for search algorithms, not written for LLMs, not written for LMNO, PEO, whatever you want to call it.

It’s that everything we do and all the things that we tailor and all the things that we try to improve, it’s all about how do we reward content that human beings find satisfying and say, that was what I was looking for, that’s what I needed. So if all of our systems are lining up with that, it’s that thing about you’re going to be ahead of it if you’re already doing that.

To whereas the more you’re trying to… Optimize or GEO or whatever you think it is for a specific kind of system, the more you’re potentially going to get away from the main goal, especially if those systems improve and get better, then you’re kind of having to shift and play a lot of catch up.

So, you know, we’re going to talk about some of that stuff here with the big caveat, we’re only talking about Google, right? That’s who we work for. So we don’t say what, anybody else’s AI search, chat search, whatever you want to kind of deal with and kind of go with it from there. But we’ll talk about how we look at things and how it works.”

Optimizing For Humans Is The Key To Google Success

While Sullivan’s comments are limited to Google’s own AI systems, they make it clear that optimizing for anything or anyone other than the end user is a mistake. Instead, it is crucial to do everything possible to deliver the best content and most value for real human visitors to your site. 

This makes sense in the big scheme of things. Ultimately, Google’s goal is to provide the best experience for real human users and delivering websites optimized primarily for artificial systems isn’t likely to win over many users. If you keep your goals aligned with providing the most value and best experience for human users, you’re better positioned to be the type of site Google wants to highlight. 

For more from Danny Sullivan’s discussion with John Mueller, listen to the full Search Off The Record episode here.