| Sold as | Reality | Why it persists |
|---|---|---|
| llms.txt files | Google's documentation states Search does not use them. TIER A A study of 300,000 domains found roughly 10% adoption, and across 500M+ AI bot visits in one 90-day window, only 408 requested the file. TIER B | It is cheap to deliver and looks technical. Note: some large tech companies do ship one — for coding agents, a different audience entirely. |
| "AI schema" packages | No special schema exists for generative AI. Google says so; the Ahrefs experiment measured no meaningful uplift. TIER A | Schema is real and useful for other things, which makes the pitch sound legitimate. |
| Keyword density for AI | Measured as negative in the GEO experiment: −9.1%. TIER A | Twenty years of SEO muscle memory. |
| Bulk AI-generated content | By construction it is the average of existing content — precisely what these systems are built to skip. | It is nearly free to produce, so the margin is enormous. |
| Paid mention networks | Google names inauthentic mentions explicitly as a myth. TIER A Agreement between low-quality sources is exactly the pattern these systems discount. | Chapter 5's finding is real, so "buy mentions" sounds like a logical shortcut. It is the 2011 link-buying playbook. |
| Hidden text and prompt injection | Instructions hidden in white text or HTML comments telling the model to recommend you. Detectable, filtered, and if discovered, catastrophic for trust. | It occasionally works for a few weeks, which generates screenshots, which generate sales. |
| "Guaranteed AI ranking" | Nobody can guarantee output from a non-deterministic system nobody outside the lab controls. | It is what nervous buyers want to hear. |
| Tools claiming internal platform data | Google states no third-party tool has such access. TIER A | Dashboards look authoritative regardless of what feeds them. |
| Chunking-as-a-service | Google: "There's no requirement to break your content into tiny pieces." TIER A Clear writing helps at the margin; a chunking product does not. | It repackages ordinary editing with a technical name. |
The four questions that filter almost everyone
You do not need to be technical to run this filter. Ask any vendor:
- "What is your source for that number?" A name and a link, or nothing. This one question ends most conversations.
- "What would we see if this did not work?" Anyone who cannot describe failure is not measuring.
- "Which of these is a Google-confirmed requirement and which is your hypothesis?" An honest practitioner will happily separate the two. A dishonest one will not understand the question.
- "What does the platform's own documentation say about this?" Google's AI optimisation guide is public and free. If their pitch contradicts it, they need a very good reason.
Almost everything being sold as an AI visibility secret is either something Google has publicly said does nothing, or ordinary good practice with a new name and a higher price.
If you only do one thing
Read Google's own "AI optimisation guide" in Search Central documentation. It is short, free, authoritative, and it will inoculate you against most of what you are about to be sold.