If you work with affiliate partners, you've probably spent the last year wondering which way the wind's blowing on AI search. Who gets cited? Who gets buried? And does any of this change how you brief your publishers?
Google just gave us some answers.
Search Engine Journal recently published a summary of Google's new AI search guide, and whilst the document covers a lot of ground, a few things stood out to us immediately. Particularly from an affiliate perspective.
The guide is pretty clear: AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) aren't separate disciplines. They sit inside SEO, not above or beside it. If your affiliate partners are doing solid, well-structured SEO work, they're already building the right foundations for AI visibility.
That's actually reassuring. A lot of the noise around AI search has implied that everything needs to start from scratch. It doesn't.
We’ve mentioned previously that a short, clear summary paragraph at the top of an article could help with GEO. Google's guide suggests that's not a requirement if it doesn't make sense for the content. Don't add a chunk just for the sake of it.
Quality and relevance still rule. Inauthentic or spammy mentions won't help you. That's not new, but it's good to see it confirmed directly from Google.
Here's where it gets interesting for affiliates. Google's guide describes the most valuable content for LLMs as content that "provides unique insight beyond common knowledge."
That's a meaningful shift in emphasis.
It points toward something the best affiliate publishers have always known: editors with genuine category expertise write differently. Reviews by someone who's actually used the product. Comparisons built on real testing. Guides shaped by a writer who's spent years covering a niche.
We're not writing off listicles just yet. But the content LLMs want to surface is the stuff that couldn't have been written by someone who just ran a quick Google search first.
This isn't entirely new information, but it's one of the clearest confirmations we've seen from Google about what they value in an AI search context. For anyone managing affiliate programmes, it's a useful steer when briefing publishers on content quality, and a reminder that first-party data and genuine editorial voice are only going to matter more.
We'll keep an eye on how content partners in the space adapt to this. The ones who lean into their editors' real knowledge rather than chasing AI-friendly formats are, in our view, the ones to back.
Want to talk through what this means for your affiliate programme? Get in touch with us.
