AEO and GEO are new names for a real question: how does a store show up when a shopper asks an AI assistant instead of a search box? The first answer is already published, by Google and OpenAI.
What Google asks
Google's page "AI features and your website" is direct: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary." It adds that "You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features," and that there is "no special schema.org structured data that you need to add."
What it does ask:
- Allow crawling "in robots.txt, and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure." In practice, allow search crawlers as verified bots, not by the name they send, and if you block a group such as AI training, check whether any crawler in it also serves search.
- Make sure important content is "available in textual form."
- Make sure structured data "matches the visible text on the page."
- Keep Merchant Center and Business Profile information up to date.
What OpenAI asks
OpenAI's crawler documentation says OAI-SearchBot is the crawler for search, and that sites which opt out of it won't appear in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still show up as navigational links. OpenAI says merchants share product feeds "so their catalogs are fully represented in ChatGPT"; its commerce docs say feed onboarding is "currently available to approved partners," by application. In March, OpenAI said ChatGPT would focus on product discovery and let merchants use their own checkout.
What you can measure
Google Search Console now has a Generative AI performance report, under Performance, showing how often links to your site appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Sites with few AI impressions may not see it yet. Google says it had reached all websites by August 31, 2026. It reports impressions; your analytics still holds the clicks.
Where the noise is
- AI text files such as llms.txt. Google says its AI features don't need them. Publishing one is optional.
- Promises of a guaranteed top spot in an AI answer. Ask what the promise rests on. AI visibility tools are a different thing: they run a set of prompts and record how answers mention your brand. That is useful competitive context, and it measures a sample of answers to selected prompts, which is a different thing from your traffic or sales.
- Rewriting pages for machines. The published guidance asks for crawlable, text-based pages whose markup matches what people see. That is the same page.
The short version
Be readable, be current, be allowed in. Then measure before buying more.
Next in Navigations: monitoring, and which tool answers which question.
Cartograph.ai™ is building the merchant-side evidence layer for AI shopping agents. It doesn't tune content for AI search.