Search engine optimization

Google publishes the list of systems it ranks with. Link analysis and PageRank are on it, described as reading how pages link to each other to work out what they cover^[3], and links remain how Google finds most new pages^[4]. The helpful content system, announced as a separate system in 2022, became part of core ranking in March 2024^[5]. The starter guide puts writing ahead of technique: useful content influences a site's presence in results more than any other suggestion it documents^[6]. E-E-A-T is not itself a ranking factor, though Google says its systems use factors that identify content showing it^[7].

How far the two coincide depends on how overlap is measured. BrightEdge, tracking AI Overview citations for 16 months, found 54.5% ranked organically by September 2025, up from 32.3% in May 2024^[8]; only 16.7% ranked in the top 10^[9]. Semrush, over 5,000 keywords and 150,000 citations, put domain overlap with the top 10 above 91% for Perplexity, around 86% for AI Overviews and about 54% for AI Mode, with ChatGPT weakest^[10]. Ahrefs, matching exact URLs across 15,000 long-tail queries searched in Google and Bing, found 80% ranked nowhere in Google for the query that produced them^[11], Perplexity reaching 28.6% in the top 10 against roughly 8% for the other assistants^[12]. Domain overlap is high and URL overlap low: the engines pull from the same sources, not the same pages.

Google's AI features documentation states that no additional requirements and no special optimizations are needed to be cited there^[13], and that existing SEO fundamentals remain worthwhile: crawl access through robots.txt, page experience (Core Web Vitals), accurate structured data^[14]. Generative engine optimization treats AI answers as a surface of their own regardless; where the two measurably part company is set out at SEO and GEO.