Victorious says most AI search technical work already overlaps with SEO

Victorious says brands do not need a new technical playbook for AI search because most of the work already comes with strong SEO. The agency is pushing marketers to focus on crawler access and page structure — and skip llms.txt for now.

Why it matters: - Brands spending on AI search visibility may be overbuying work they already get from a solid SEO program. - Victorious says the biggest wins now come from tightening existing technical basics, not adding one-off fixes for AI systems. - The agency argues that time spent on low-value tactics can distract teams from changes that actually affect crawlability and visibility.

What happened: - Victorious said most technical work commissioned for AI search duplicates what a working SEO program already does. - The agency made the case in a recent episode of its podcast, The Search Signal, as Google’s September 2026 spam update rolled out globally. - Victorious said one popular tactic, llms.txt, has no confirmed effect on any AI platform. - CEO Michael Transon said the differences between Google ranking and appearing in AI answers are smaller than the industry suggests.

The details: - Victorious said Google’s AI features draw on Google’s own search index, so crawlability, indexation, site architecture, internal linking, and rendering still matter. - The agency said those core SEO elements carry over to AI search without requiring a separate budget line. - Transon said the key differences are knowing which bots to allow and making every page understandable on its own. - Victorious said OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google each publish separate crawlers for model training and live search. - A site can allow one crawler while blocking another. - Victorious recommended that marketing and legal teams align on bot access rules when there are legal reasons to block parts of a site. - The agency said teams should verify that allowed bots can actually reach the site, since a robots.txt permission can still be blocked by a firewall or CDN rule. - Victorious said AI systems retrieve passages rather than whole sites and may not follow internal links. - The agency advised putting the company name and what it does in visible text near the top of every important page. - Transon recommended skipping llms.txt. - llms.txt is a plain-text summary of a website written for language models. - Google’s John Mueller wrote in a Bluesky post last year, “No AI system currently uses llms.txt,” and said he could not say whether that would change. - Victorious said nothing published since has contradicted that view. - The agency said llms.txt can become stale if product rollouts or repositioning are not reflected in the file. - Victorious said the format makes more sense for developer documentation than for general marketing use. - Transon said, “Don’t waste your time unless you really have a very specific reason like developer documentation.” - Victorious said the full episode with cited sources is available on the company’s website.

Between the lines: - Victorious is pushing back on a fast-growing AI search consulting market that often frames the channel as technically separate from SEO. - The agency’s message suggests many brands may get more value from execution discipline than from chasing new file formats or platform-specific tricks. - The warning on llms.txt also reflects a broader risk in AI search: maintaining another public-facing document can create inconsistency if the company updates products or positioning elsewhere first.

What’s next: - Victorious expects brands to keep focusing on core technical SEO while treating AI search as an extension of existing discovery work. - Teams that manage bot access may need tighter coordination between marketing, legal, and infrastructure owners. - Companies watching AI search may continue testing new tactics, but Victorious is signaling that durable gains are more likely to come from site fundamentals than from speculative add-ons.

The bottom line: - Victorious says the safest AI search strategy is to do SEO well, control crawler access carefully, and ignore shortcuts that have not shown real-world support.