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Google SEO & AEO rules

Google ranks pages in Search and builds AI Overviews and AI Mode answers from the same index. These are the rules Google documents today.

Reviewed Oct 30, 2026 · next review Nov 2, 2026

Rules in force 37 of 42 apply to Google
High impact 13 fix these first
Official 86% 32 from engine docs
Retired 10 for Google

Impact split

  • High impact 13
  • Medium impact 19
  • Low impact 5

Google rules by area

Share of each area that applies to Google

Crawling & indexing 7

02 High impact

Treat training bots and search bots as separate robots.txt decisions

GPTBot, ClaudeBot and the Google-Extended token control model training, while OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and Googlebot control search visibility.

04 High impact

Ship primary content in the initial HTML; most AI crawlers don't execute JavaScript

Google renders JavaScript but queues it, and still recommends server-side or pre-rendering.

05 Medium impact

Don't use Google-Extended to control Search; it only governs Gemini training and grounding

Google states that Google-Extended does not affect inclusion in Google Search and is not a ranking signal.

06 Medium impact

Use noindex, not robots.txt Disallow, to keep a page out of search results

A Disallow stops crawling, but Google can still index the URL from links and show it without a snippet.

07 Medium impact

Submit an XML sitemap with lastmod values that change only on significant updates

Google uses lastmod only when it is consistently and verifiably accurate, and a copyright year change does not count.

09 Medium impact

Point redirects, rel=canonical, sitemaps and internal links at the same canonical URL

Google treats redirects and rel=canonical as strong signals and sitemap inclusion as a weak one, and the signals stack.

10 Medium impact

Return real 404/410 for missing pages and keep critical HTML under Googlebot's 2 MB fetch limit

Google asks for meaningful status codes so it knows whether a URL can be indexed, and soft 404s waste crawl.

Content & E-E-A-T 5

12 High impact

Publish original, first-hand content that adds something the rest of the web hasn't said

Google's helpful content guidance and its 2026 generative AI guide both say the same thing: content created for people with first-hand experience wins, and recycled summaries do not.

13 High impact

Don't mass-produce pages for query variations, with AI or without it

Google's scaled content abuse policy covers many pages generated primarily to manipulate rankings, and it names generative AI used without adding value as an example.

14 Medium impact

Show who wrote it, how it was made and why it exists, with real bylines and author pages

Google's Who, How and Why framework asks for accurate bylines, an explanation of how content was produced and a purpose beyond attracting search traffic.

15 Medium impact

Don't host third-party content that exists only to borrow your domain's ranking strength

Google's site reputation policy targets third-party content published mainly to exploit the host site's ranking signals, such as coupon or casino sections on news sites.

16 Medium impact

Refresh key pages with real updates on a schedule; never just bump the date

An Ahrefs analysis of about 17 million AI citations found cited URLs were roughly 26% fresher than organic results, with ChatGPT and Perplexity showing the strongest preference and AI Overviews the weakest.

On-page 6

17 High impact

Write a unique, descriptive <title> per page with the brand at the start or end

Google builds title links mainly from the title element, but also uses the visible H1, og:title, anchor text and WebSite structured data, and it rewrites titles that are vague, stuffed or boilerplate.

18 High impact

Link to every indexable page with crawlable <a href> links and descriptive anchor text

Google generally only follows <a> elements with an href, and links built on javascript: URLs or click handlers may not be extracted.

19 Medium impact

Organize pages with one clear H1 and descriptive H2/H3 sections that match real questions

Google's 2026 AI guide recommends clear paragraphs, sections and headings for readers, and lists headings as a title link source.

20 Medium impact

Use <img> elements with descriptive alt text and filenames; Google doesn't index CSS images

Google calls alt text the most important image attribute and discovers images through the src of <img> elements, including inside <picture>.

21 Low impact

Write a meta description that accurately summarizes the page; expect Google to rewrite it

Google primarily builds snippets from page content and uses the meta description only when it describes the page more accurately for the query.

22 Low impact

Use short, readable URLs with words separated by hyphens

Google's URL structure guidance recommends descriptive words and hyphens to separate them, and it clarified the hyphen versus underscore guidance in October 2026.

Structured data 4

23 Medium impact

Use JSON-LD structured data that matches what's visible on the page

Google recommends JSON-LD and requires all required properties for rich result eligibility, which is never guaranteed.

24 Medium impact

Target only rich results in Google's current gallery, like Product, Article, Organization

Google trimmed its structured data features repeatedly in 2025 and 2026.

25 Medium impact

Define your brand entity with Organization markup: logo, url, sameAs profiles, contact

Organization is a supported Google feature used for logos and knowledge panel details.

26 Low impact

Don't expect schema to unlock AI answers; Google says no special markup is needed

Google's AI features doc and 2026 AI optimization guide both state that structured data is not required for generative AI search and there is no special schema.org markup to add.

Page experience 3

27 High impact

Serve the same content, links and markup on mobile as on desktop

Google completed mobile-first indexing in October 2023, so it indexes the mobile version of your pages.

28 Medium impact

Keep LCP under 2.5 s, INP under 200 ms and CLS under 0.1 at the 75th percentile

Google states Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems, measured on the 75th percentile of real page loads split by mobile and desktop.

29 Low impact

Serve every page over HTTPS and avoid interstitials that block the main content

Google's page experience guidance asks whether pages are served securely and whether they avoid intrusive interstitials.

AI answers & citations 9

30 High impact

Get indexed and snippet-eligible first; Google's AI answers draw only from that pool

Google states that to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode a page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet, with no additional technical requirements.

31 High impact

Check that your site is included in the Search generative AI setting in Search Console

Since 2026 Search Console has a site-wide Search generative AI control covering AI Overviews and AI Mode, rolled out to all sites by August 31, 2026.

33 High impact

Publish original data and first-hand findings that others will cite

Google's 2026 AI guide tells site owners to offer a unique point of view and not recycle what others have said, and it describes AI answers as grounded in retrieved pages.

34 High impact

Earn genuine brand mentions on third-party sites, reviews and video

An Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands found branded web mentions correlated with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, far above backlinks at 0.218.

35 High impact

Never hide instructions or engineered text aimed at AI systems in your pages

Google's spam policies now define spam to include attempts to manipulate generative AI responses in Search, and Google clarified in May 2026 that spam policies apply to AI responses.

36 Medium impact

Back claims with statistics, expert quotes and cited sources

The Princeton GEO paper (KDD 2024) found that adding statistics, quotations and source citations raised visibility in generative engine responses by up to 40% on its benchmark, while keyword stuffing did not help.

37 Medium impact

Use nosnippet, data-nosnippet and max-snippet deliberately; they limit AI reuse too

Google lists nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex as the controls for what Search shows, including in AI features.

38 Medium impact

Measure AI visibility with first-party reports plus prompt tracking across engines

Google's Search generative AI performance reports (June 2026, global since August 31, 2026) show impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Bing's AI Performance report (February 2026) shows Copilot citations and grounding queries.

39 Low impact

Ask loyal readers to add you as a Google preferred source

Preferred sources let users pick sites they want to see more often.

No longer works 10

Stop pinging Google's sitemap endpoint and setting priority or changefreq

Do insteadSubmit sitemaps in Search Console or via a Sitemap: line in robots.txt

Don't use crawl-delay to throttle Googlebot; Google ignores it

Do insteadLet Google adjust crawl rate automatically, or return 503/429 temporarily under overload

Stop targeting keyword density or a minimum word count

Do insteadWrite until the question is fully answered, then stop

Stop changing publish dates without changing the content

Do insteadChange dates only when the content materially changes

Stop filling in the meta keywords tag

Do insteadRemove meta keywords from templates

Don't add FAQPage markup expecting FAQ rich results in Google

Do insteadKeep visible Q&A sections where they genuinely help readers

Drop HowTo, ClaimReview, course info, estimated salary and vehicle listing markup for Google

Do insteadRemove these types from templates unless another platform consumes them

Stop optimizing for First Input Delay; INP replaced it

Do insteadTrack INP in field data and aim for 200 ms or less

Don't chop content into tiny chunks or rewrite it 'for AI'

Do insteadKeep complete pages with clear headings and paragraphs

Don't expect llms.txt to raise rankings or AI citations

Do insteadKeep an llms.txt only if you have docs that coding agents read