Stop Calling It SEO: 12 Strategies To Dominate AI Search in 2026

2. Google’s new AI search guide says most AI optimization tactics are unnecessary. Does that validate your thinking, or do you disagree?

I disagree.

Google’s guidance is self-serving and naive because it treats AI search as if a single platform’s recommendations could explain the entire search ecosystem.

That’s the problem with the “it’s just SEO” argument. It gives people permission to keep doing the same thing, even when it’s producing diminishing returns.

Google’s guidance may be useful if you only care about Google. But it doesn’t explain what works in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or other AI search environments. Each system retrieves, evaluates, and surfaces information differently.

The only part I broadly agree with is the need to create non-commodity content. Beyond that, Google’s public guidance doesn’t line up with what we know about how these systems actually function.

Google also has a long history of saying one thing publicly while its systems behave differently in practice. So when someone points to Google’s guidance and says, “See, AI search is just SEO,” they’re looking for an excuse to stay comfortable.

3. AI search requires a fundamentally different strategy, but the consensus is that it layers on top of traditional SEO. What are your thoughts?

AI search is an expansion of SEO, but there’s enough of a step-change difference that it deserves to be treated separately.

The issue isn’t that every tactic is brand new because some tactics overlap. For example, Digital PR, link building, sales outreach, and fundraising all use similar motions. But no one argues they are the same discipline because they share tactics.

AI search works the same way. It may use some SEO tactics, but that doesn’t make it traditional SEO.

The problem with saying “it’s just SEO” is that it makes the work smaller at the exact moment teams are open to something new. It keeps AI search trapped inside the old perception of SEO, limiting what it can do. 

If we keep forcing it into the same box, we make it harder to get the budget, tools, team, and strategic ownership this work requires.