Google and Bing just published opposite advice on GEO. Both are right.

Last week, two search engines took very different positions on Generative Engine Optimization.

Google (May 15, 2026): GEO is "still SEO." No chunking. No llms.txt. No paid mentions. No special schema.

Bing (Fabrice Canel, April 2025): "Traditional SEO practices become obsolete." Bing added GEO to its official guidelines and built a dashboard inside Webmaster Tools to track Copilot citations.

At first glance, they seem to contradict each other. They are not.

What Google is saying

Google is talking about tactics. Most "GEO hacks" sold by agencies do not move AI Overviews. Why? Because AI Overviews lean on the same ranking signals as classic search. Content quality, relevance, authority, trust. The fundamentals have not changed.

The quick fixes do not work. Chunking your content into tiny pieces does not help. Adding a llms.txt file does not guarantee citation. Paying for mentions is a waste of money.

Google is warning you: do not fall for the snake oil.

What Bing is saying

Bing is talking about measurement. Copilot, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews behave differently from a blue‑link SERP. The logic of citations is new. If you pretend otherwise, you are flying blind.

You cannot optimize what you cannot measure. You cannot improve what you do not track. Bing is giving you the instruments. A dashboard to see how Copilot cites your content. A framework to understand GEO as a discipline separate from classic SEO.

Bing is not telling you to abandon SEO. It is telling you that you need new instruments to see how your content performs in AI answers.

My read on both

Keep doing real SEO. That is the engine. It is not going away.

Layer GEO on top as your instrumentation. Track how your content gets cited inside AI answers. Use that data to inform what you write, how you structure it, and where you publish.

Skip the shortcut tactics. Neither Google nor anyone serious endorses them.

Two flavors of GEO are competing for budget right now

The first flavor sells shortcuts. Chunking. llms.txt. Paid mentions. They are selling fear.

The second flavor tracks citations. It helps you measure what is already working and gives you data to make better decisions.

Google killed the first one. Bing built the second one.

What we are doing at Rankfender

We do not sell shortcuts. We do not promise quick fixes. We track citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and other AI systems.

RAIVE monitors where your brand appears. RCGE generates content that AI actually wants to cite. RAISA watches your data and tells you what to do next.

No snake oil. Just instrumentation.

What I am curious about

Have you seen any "GEO hacks" being sold to you? What was the most ridiculous one?

Imed Radhouani
Founder & CTO – Rankfender