At Google Search Central Reside Deep Dive Asia Pacific 2025, Cherry Prommawin and Gary Illyes led a session on how AI suits into Search.
They requested whether or not we’d like separate frameworks for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Reply Engine Optimization (AEO).
Their insights counsel that GEO and AEO don’t require wholly new disciplines.
AI Options Are Simply Options
Cherry Prommawin defined that AI Mode, AI Overviews, Circle to Search, and Lens behave like featured snippets or data panels.
These options draw on the identical rating alerts and information sources as conventional Search.
All of them run on Google’s core indexing and rating engine with out requiring a standalone platform. Including an AI part is solely a matter of introducing additional interpretation layers.
Gary Illyes emphasised that each AI-driven instruments and traditional Search companies share a single, unified infrastructure. This underlying infrastructure handles indexing, rating, and serving for all end result sorts.
AI Mode and AI Overviews are simply options of Search, and constructed on the identical Search infrastructure.
Deploying new AI capabilities means integrating further fashions into the identical system. Circle to Search and Lens merely add their query-understanding modules on prime.
Crawling
All of the AI Overviews and AI Mode options depend on the identical crawler that powers Googlebot. This crawler visits pages, follows hyperlinks, and gathers recent content material.
Gemini is handled as a separate system inside Google’s crawler ecosystem and makes use of its personal bots inside Google’s ecosystem to feed information into its fashions.
Indexing
In AI Search, the core indexing course of mirrors the strategies used for conventional search. Pages which have been crawled are analyzed and arranged into the index, then statistical fashions and BERT are utilized to refine that information.
These statistical fashions have been in use for greater than 20 years and have been first created to assist the “did you imply” function and assist catch spam.
BERT provides a deeper understanding of pure language to the combo.

Serving
As soon as the index is constructed, the system should interpret every person question. It appears to be like for cease phrases, identifies key phrases, and breaks the question into significant components.
The rating section then orders a whole lot of potential outcomes primarily based on varied alerts. Totally different codecs, equivalent to textual content, pictures, and video, carry completely different weightings.
RankBrain applies machine studying to regulate these alerts whereas MUM brings a multimodal, multitask strategy to understanding complicated queries and matching them with the very best solutions.
Learn additionally: Google Search Central APAC 2025: All the things From Day 1
What This Means: Use The Identical Ideas From search engine marketing
Given the tight integration of AI options with normal Search, creating distinct GEO or AEO applications might duplicate present efforts.
As SEOs, we should always be capable to apply present optimization practices to each AI Search and “conventional” Search merchandise. Specializing in how AI enhancements match into present workflows lets groups leverage their experience.
Spreading sources to construct separate frameworks might pull consideration away from higher-impact duties.
Cherry Prommawin and Gary Illyes concluded their session by reinforcing that AI is one other function within the Search product.
search engine marketing professionals can proceed to refine their methods utilizing the identical rules that information conventional SEO.
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