# AI SEO vs SEO: What Carries Over and What Is New > How AI SEO differs from traditional SEO: what Google documents, what carries over, what is new, the myths, and what changes for a Perth business's programme. Source: https://aiseoperth.net.au/ai-seo-vs-seo/ --- Reference # AI SEO vs SEO: what carries over and what is new Author Dorian Menard, founder of Search Scope Published 9 September 2026 Reading time 7 min AI SEO extends SEO rather than replacing it. On Google, the relationship is documented: existing SEO best practices remain relevant for AI Overviews and AI Mode, with no additional requirements. What carries over is technical accessibility, indexing, useful content and clean structure. What is new is the unit of optimisation (the passage rather than the page), the need for the business to resolve as one entity, prompt coverage instead of keyword lists, corroboration instead of link authority, and measurement by repeated sampling instead of rank tracking. ## Key facts Key facts about AI SEO vs SEO Fact Detail Evidence Google's position Best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features; no additional requirements or special optimisations; a page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet. DOCUMENTED Carries over Crawlability, indexing, rendering, internal links, page experience, content in text form, structured data that matches the page. DOCUMENTED New: access Separate retrieval and training agents from OpenAI, Perplexity, Anthropic and Google (Google-Extended), each controlled independently. DOCUMENTED New: unit Answers are composed from passages, so the section is the unit of optimisation. INFERRED New: measurement There is no rank position in a composed answer. Visibility is measured by repeated runs of fixed prompts. INFERRED Click effect US studies found lower click-through when an AI summary is present (Pew: 8% versus 15% of visits; Ahrefs: about 34.5% lower CTR for the top page on informational keywords). TESTED ## The question underneath the question A business already paying for SEO is not asking what AI SEO is. It is asking whether the money is about to be wasted. The short answer is no, and on Google it is not an opinion. DOCUMENTED Google’s site-owner documentation for AI Overviews and AI Mode says: “The best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features in Google Search. There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.” The eligibility gate is the ordinary one: indexed, and eligible to show with a snippet. Google’s May 2025 guidance adds that “the underpinnings of what Google has long advised carries across to these new experiences”. TESTED What has changed is where the informational load lands. [Pew’s US browsing panel](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/) found 18% of Google searches in March 2025 produced an AI summary, and that users who saw one clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits against 15% without. [Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks/) estimated a 34.5% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page on informational keywords with an AI Overview. The need to be visible did not move; the format of visibility did. ## What carries over unchanged DOCUMENTED Google’s list of fundamentals for AI features is a list of SEO fundamentals: crawling allowed in robots.txt and by any CDN or hosting layer, content findable through internal links, good page experience, important content in text form, images and video where they help, structured data that matches the visible text, and current Merchant Center and Business Profile information. Index health is a strict prerequisite, because a page that is not indexed is not a candidate. INFERRED Technical health arguably carries more weight than it did, because retrieval agents fetch and read a page at answer time and a page whose content only exists after JavaScript runs may contribute nothing to that fetch. No platform publishes its rendering capability for these agents, so this is stated as inference. ## What is genuinely new ### Access is per agent DOCUMENTED Traditional SEO managed Googlebot and Bingbot. AI search adds agents that platforms document and control separately: OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User alongside GPTBot at OpenAI; PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User; Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User and ClaudeBot; and Google-Extended for Gemini training and grounding. Blocking all of them to stop scraping also removes a site from the answers its buyers read. Each is an independent decision. The [crawler access guide](https://aiseoperth.net.au/guides/ai-crawler-access/) covers checking them. ### The unit is the passage INFERRED Optimising for a ranking position and optimising for retrieval into a composed answer are different jobs. The second rewards a section that answers its question in its first sentences and stands on its own when lifted. Older content fails here more than anywhere else, because a decade of content marketing produced long preambles in front of the answer. [Answer Engine Optimisation](https://aiseoperth.net.au/answer-engine-optimisation/) covers the passage rules. ### The business must resolve as one entity INFERRED Keyword SEO rarely required a business to settle on one canonical name, one address form and one set of service names across every public surface. A composed answer has to name something specific, so ambiguity now has a direct cost. This is the substance of [entity SEO](https://aiseoperth.net.au/entity-seo/). ### Prompt coverage replaces keyword lists Keyword research maps what people type into a box. Prompt research maps what people ask an assistant, which is longer, comparative and full of constraints. “AI SEO agency Perth” and “who should I talk to about my business showing up wrong in ChatGPT” express the same intent in incompatible formats. DOCUMENTED Google documents that both its generative surfaces may fan out one question into multiple related searches, which is why coverage of the surrounding questions matters more than one page for one phrase. ### Corroboration replaces link authority as the off-site job INFERRED Link building was about authority flowing through a graph of websites. Corroboration is about independent sources agreeing on facts, because an answer composed from several retrieved sources reflects what they agree on. Links still matter for ranking; agreement is the new thing to manage. ### Measurement is by sampling INFERRED There is no rank position inside a composed answer, and the same prompt returns different answers across runs. Visibility is therefore measured by running fixed prompts repeatedly and reporting frequencies, which is the basis of this publication’s [methodology](https://aiseoperth.net.au/methodology/). DOCUMENTED On Google, AI feature traffic is folded into the Search Console Performance report under Web search, not reported separately. ## Side by side Area Traditional SEO AI SEO Primary target A ranking position Being a source a composed answer draws on and cites Unit of optimisation The page The passage Query research Keyword volume and difficulty Prompt coverage across the decision journey Off-site work Links and authority Corroboration and factual agreement Identity work Optional, mostly local SEO Foundational for every business Access Googlebot, Bingbot Plus each platform’s search and user agents, and Google-Extended Measurement Rank tracking, clicks, impressions Repeated-run frequencies, citation context, referrals What is guaranteed Nothing Nothing, and more visibly so ## Three myths **“SEO is dead.”** DOCUMENTED The mechanism feeding Google’s AI features is the Search index. Google says so, and says the existing practices remain relevant. A site that is not technically sound and indexed is not a candidate for an overview. **“AI SEO is a completely new discipline.”** Most of it is technical SEO and content quality done properly. The genuinely new parts are the ones above: per-agent access, passage-level structure, entity resolution, prompt coverage, corroboration and sampled measurement. **“You need a specialist AI SEO tool.”** Tools help sample assistant responses at volume. None substitutes for verifying crawler access, reading the rendered HTML, or fixing a registry record. ## What changes for an existing Perth programme INFERRED In most cases the change is a re-sequencing of what is already spent, not a new line item. A programme producing keyword-led articles every month has the budget; what changes is what it buys. A practical order: verify access agent by agent and read the rendered HTML; run a brand-fact inventory across every public surface and fix disagreements in order of source authority; restructure the highest-value pages so the answer sits at the top; redirect new content toward the comparison, cost and suitability questions Perth buyers ask; and set a repeated-run baseline so there is something to compare against in six months. Nothing in that order requires stopping technical work, and cutting it removes the input that feeds the surface being targeted. Whether Perth businesses are being named in these answers today, and by which sources, is the [observation programme’s](https://aiseoperth.net.au/research/) question. This page does not answer it. ## What is documented and what is inferred - **Documented:** Google’s statement that SEO best practices carry over; the fundamentals list; per-agent access controls; fan-out; Search Console reporting. - **Tested:** the Pew and Ahrefs click figures, both US. - **Inferred:** the passage as unit; entity resolution as a new cost; corroboration as the off-site job; sampled measurement; the re-sequencing advice. - **Not established:** any Perth-specific frequency. ## Related concepts - [ Reference What is AI SEO? The definition this comparison rests on. ](https://aiseoperth.net.au/what-is-ai-seo/) - [ Reference Entity SEO The identity work that is new. ](https://aiseoperth.net.au/entity-seo/) - [ Reference Google AI Overviews Where Google documents the relationship. ](https://aiseoperth.net.au/google-ai-overviews/) - [ Guide Measuring AI search visibility Sampled measurement in practice. ](https://aiseoperth.net.au/guides/measuring-ai-search-visibility/) ## Related research - [ Planned study Perth AI Search Visibility Index Repeated-run measurement for Perth prompts. ](https://aiseoperth.net.au/research/) ## Sources 1. [AI features and your website](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features), Google Search Central (read 9 September 2026) DOCUMENTED 2. [Top ways to ensure your content performs well in Google's AI experiences on Search](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/05/succeeding-in-ai-search), Google Search Central Blog, 21 May 2025 (read 9 September 2026) DOCUMENTED 3. [Overview of OpenAI crawlers](https://platform.openai.com/docs/bots), OpenAI (read 9 September 2026) DOCUMENTED 4. [Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/), Pew Research Center, 22 July 2025 (read 9 September 2026) TESTED 5. [AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 34.5%](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks/), Ahrefs, 17 April 2025 (read 9 September 2026) TESTED On this page - [Definition](#definition) - [The question underneath the question](#the-question-underneath-the-question) - [What carries over unchanged](#what-carries-over-unchanged) - [What is genuinely new](#what-is-genuinely-new) - [Side by side](#side-by-side) - [Three myths](#three-myths) - [What changes for an existing Perth programme](#what-changes-for-an-existing-perth-programme) - [What is documented and what is inferred](#what-is-documented-and-what-is-inferred) - [Sources](#sources) Evidence labels Claims on this page are labelled DOCUMENTED, OBSERVED, TESTED, INFERRED or HYPOTHESIS. [What the labels mean](https://aiseoperth.net.au/methodology/#evidence-labels). Published by Search Scope AI SEO Perth is published by Search Scope, a Perth SEO consultancy founded by Dorian Menard. Search Scope provides commercial SEO and AI search optimisation services; this website is maintained as its specialist Perth AI search research and reference publication. [Search Scope](https://searchscope.com.au/)