Gemini SEO: how to get your brand recommended in Google's AI search
A current Gemini SEO guide for accessible pages, consistent facts, Google Search evidence, and separate crawler checks without promising recommendations.
No SEO tactic guarantees that Gemini or Google's AI features will recommend a brand. The reliable work is to publish useful information, meet Search requirements, keep facts consistent, and measure search, answers, referrals, and crawler evidence as different things.
Start with Google's current guidance
Google's AI features guidance says existing SEO best practices remain relevant for AI Overviews and AI Mode. It says there are no additional technical requirements or special optimizations for inclusion, and that meeting requirements does not guarantee crawling, indexing, or serving.
Make the page findable through internal links, keep important information in text, provide a useful page experience, and ensure structured data matches visible copy. These are publishing and eligibility practices, not recommendation switches.
Keep Googlebot and Google-Extended distinct
Googlebot is the crawler used by Google Search. Google-Extended is a robots.txt control token for whether content Google crawls may be used for some Gemini training and grounding systems. Google says Google-Extended has no separate HTTP user-agent string and has no effect on Google Search.
Document the policy you intend, then check robots.txt, CDN rules, origin responses, canonical tags, and index status separately. Do not treat a Googlebot request or a Google-Extended token as evidence of a Gemini recommendation.
Publish facts a buyer can verify
- Use one canonical name for the company and product.
- Date pricing, feature, availability, and market claims.
- Link specifications and research to primary sources.
- Explain comparison criteria before naming a preferred option.
- Keep structured data aligned with the visible page.
Measure Google AI search without blending evidence
Use Search Console for Google search impressions, clicks, queries, and index diagnostics. Google announced on June 3, 2026 that dedicated generative AI performance reports were rolling out to a subset of sites, showing impressions, pages, countries, devices, and dates for generative AI features.
Use an exact Gemini answer check when the answer is the subject. Use analytics for human AI referrals, sessions, goals, and revenue. Use server evidence for crawler requests. SearchSeal adds privacy-friendly analytics and separate crawler evidence, but it does not measure Gemini recommendations.
A practical Gemini audit
Check the intended canonical page in Search Console. Review its visible facts, links, structured data, robots policy, Googlebot responses, and Google-Extended policy as separate controls. Record any Gemini answer with its query and date. Keep every unknown visible, and do not claim that access or content structure caused a recommendation.