Google has published a guide on optimising your website for the AI features in Google Search. On the face of it, that's good news; guidance straight from the horse's mouth. In practice, the guide is weak: written in a vacuum, dodging the traffic problem, treating agentic AI as a footnote, and ultimately telling you "don't worry about it, it's just SEO." We aren't convinced.

Amelia, Paul, Pat and Russell unpack the document section by section: the jargon (SEO, GEO, AEO, AIO), the technical mechanics (RAG and query fan-out, explained with dominoes), the myth-busting section that's caused half the SEO industry to celebrate, and the bit Google glosses over entirely: agentic AI, and the difference between an AI model's training data and what it pulls in through search. Plus what financial services content teams should actually be doing now, including the compliance challenge of disclaimers being clipped out of AI-generated answers.

02:08 Google's New Guidance on Generative AI

05:49 What is an LLM compared to an AI Chatbot?

08:24 RAG (retrieval augmented generation) and query fan out

11:42 Understanding SEO in the Age of AI

14:15 Is structure still important?

22:15 Google's AEO/GEO mythbusting section

27:27 The Evolution of Search: AI and Google

31:26 Trusting Google's Guidance: A Critical Perspective

34:48 Navigating the New Landscape of Content Creation

40:39 Is Google's GEO guide helpful?

41:42 The Future of Financial Services Content

47:53 The Role of Research and Authenticity in Content

50:52 Jargon Busters: Churning