While Gemini powers AI Overviews, Google says it still ranks the basics—traditional SEO trumps trend-chasing tools like LLMS.txt.
Normal SEO still ranks in Google’s AI Overviews. The LLMS.txt hype? Dead on arrival.
Google confirms traditional SEO drives AI Overview visibility
At Google’s recent Search Central Deep Dive event in the Asia Pacific region, Gary Illyes made it plain: if you want your content to show up in AI Overviews, you don’t need a special file, a new protocol, or a magic acronym. You need traditional SEO.
Kenichi Suzuki, a Google product expert, summed it up perfectly on LinkedIn: “To get your content to appear in AI Overview, simply use normal SEO practices. You don’t need GEO, LLMO or anything else.” That means all the recent SEO chatter around LLMS.txt? Irrelevant for Google.
In fact, Illyes confirmed that Google “doesn’t support LLMS.txt and isn’t planning to,” as reported in Search Engine Land. Googlebot isn’t crawling that file, and won’t be anytime soon.
The SEO playbook for ecommerce hasn’t changed for Gemini yet
This is good news for ecommerce teams drowning in hype. If you’ve been chasing new frameworks like GEO or LLMO thinking they’ll boost AI visibility, it’s time to pivot. Google’s AI Overviews are powered by the same content ingestion systems that drive Search:
- Crawlable, indexable content
- Structured data and schema markup
- Strong internal linking
- Authority signals and content depth
If your PDPs, blog posts, or resource hubs are already optimized for traditional search, you’re in the game.
LLMS.txt might matter—just not for Google
Some in the SEO community have pointed out that OpenAI is crawling LLMS.txt aggressively. SEO pro Ray Martinez shared a log screenshot on X showing hits every 15 minutes. So yes, the file might matter for AI crawlers outside Google. But for ecommerce operators trying to rank in Gemini’s AI Overviews? It’s a red herring.
And Google Search Advocate, John Mueller, already said weeks ago that “no AI system is currently using the LLMS.txt file,” on BlueSky. The landscape moves fast, but when the people who build the search engine tell you not to bother? Believe them.
So what?
AI-generated search results are rewriting the traffic game—but Google’s still running the same index underneath. You want visibility in Google AI Overviews? Do great SEO. That means clean site structure, tight copy, smart markup, and content that actually answers user questions.
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