Rocky Shore

Search Central Live Bengaluru 2026: what Google actually said

Google’s search team was back in India for the first time since 2023. The headline was simple: good SEO is still the way into AI Overviews and AI Mode. Here’s the recap, what it means for multi-location brands, and the full 160+ slide deck.

Search By 7 min read

Good SEO is good GEO, AEO.

The line on Google’s slide in Bengaluru, answering the myth “SEO is dead. Long live GEO.”

The short version

  • No new playbook for Google’s AI. AI Overviews and AI Mode sit on the same ranking and indexing systems as classic search.
  • Query fan-out is the mechanism to understand. AI Mode breaks one question into several related searches, so pages that answer the follow-up questions get more chances to be used.
  • llms.txt does nothing for Google Search, and a canonical tag is a hint, not an instruction.
  • Template city pages are at risk. Pages that only swap the city name can be grouped as duplicates.
  • The real threat is commodity content: pages anyone could have written, whether a person or a model wrote them.

Want the slides?160+ slides from the day, in one deck.

Get the deck

About the event

Search Central Live is Google’s free, in-person event series where the Search team explains how Google Search works. The Bengaluru edition ran on Friday, 30 October 2026, from 10:00 to 17:30 at the Radisson Blu on Outer Ring Road. Seats were by application, talks were in English, and nothing was streamed or recorded. It was the first Indian edition since September 2023, when Google ran events in Bengaluru and New Delhi.

Google’s announced speakers were Gary Illyes, Cherry Prommawin and Aaseesh Marina, with other Googlers presenting through the day. Attendees shared this agenda:

  1. What’s new in Search
  2. How Search works, and where AI fits
  3. More on indexing
  4. Internationalisation and localisation
  5. Let’s talk about quality
  6. Google Discover
  7. Search updates
  8. Feature highlights: richer results and interactive search elements
  9. SEO mythbusting

“Good SEO is good GEO, AEO”

If you followed the day on LinkedIn, you saw this slide. Google’s point was that the label doesn’t matter. Its generative features are built directly on its core ranking systems, they use query fan-out to pull in related information, and the content they surface comes from Google’s search index. Gary Illyes reportedly closed the day the same way: SEO is not dead.

None of this is new policy. It’s the position Google put in writing in May 2026, in its guide Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search, which says that from Google’s side, optimising for generative AI search is still SEO. What Bengaluru added was emphasis, in a room full of people being sold “GEO packages”.

My take: this is true for Google’s AI features, and only for those. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot use their own retrieval and source selection. For AI Overviews and AI Mode, do the SEO fundamentals well. For the other answer engines, measure your visibility separately instead of assuming Google’s rules carry over.

AI Mode by the numbers

Google hasn’t published the slides, so these are figures attendees reported seeing. Treat single-source numbers with care. The two audience figures had already been shared at Google I/O in May.

FigureWhat it describesReported by
5 trillion+Google searches per year1 attendee
2.5 billion+Monthly AI Overviews users2 attendees; shared at I/O
1 billion+Monthly AI Mode users2 attendees; shared at I/O
~3×How much longer AI Mode queries are2 attendees
1 in 6Queries that are multimodal1 attendee
+40%Growth in follow-up questions1 attendee

The pattern matters more than any one number. People are asking longer questions and then asking again. Query fan-out turns each of those into several searches behind the scenes. A page built around one keyword gives the system one thing to use; a page that answers the obvious next questions gives it several.

Diagram of query fan-out: one AI Mode question about home loans for self-employed people in Chennai splits into five related searches, which combine into one answer citing a lender page, a branch page and a rates page
Query fan-out: AI Mode turns one question into several searches, then builds one answer from the pages it finds.

The technical points

llms.txt: ignored by Google Search

Google repeated that it doesn’t use llms.txt. Its AI guide was updated in June to say you can keep one for other services, but it won’t help or hurt you in Google Search.

Canonical is a hint

rel=canonical is one signal among many. Google can and will choose a different canonical if other signals point elsewhere.

City pages can collapse into duplicates

Location pages that only swap the city name can be grouped together as duplicates. For anyone running store locators or branch pages, this was the most important line of the day.

Comparison of template city pages, where only the city name changes and pages can be grouped as duplicates, with a unique branch page that has its own address, hours, services, local reviews, team, nearby landmarks and FAQs
Left: template pages that only swap the city. Right: a branch page with details only that branch has.

Real 404s, healthy servers

Serve a real 404 status for pages that don’t exist, not a “soft 404” that returns 200. Attendees also noted that AI crawlers don’t use Googlebot’s crawl budget, but heavy crawling can still slow your server, and crawl rate depends on speed, quality and server health. The same week, Gary Illyes said on a podcast that AI has made fake Googlebot traffic worse, so verify IPs before blaming Google for a spike in your logs.

Quality and commodity content

Google framed commodity content as the biggest risk: pages built on common knowledge that anyone could produce. The opposite is content with first-hand experience, original data or a real expert view. A few lines that attendees carried home:

  • Whether AI wrote a page isn’t the question. Whether it’s useful and original is.
  • Ranking first doesn’t guarantee a citation in an AI answer.
  • E-E-A-T is still the foundation, and Google showed a line from Search head Elizabeth Reid: “Search is never a solved problem.”

Sessions also touched Preferred Sources, Search profiles for creators, Subscription linking for paywalled content, and Search Console, including the generative AI performance report for tracking visibility in AI features.

What it means for multi-location brands

Most of my work is making banks, NBFCs, resorts and retail chains findable branch by branch. Here’s what I’m changing after Bengaluru:

  1. Give every branch page something only that branch has. Exact address and hours that match the Google Business Profile, services actually offered there, nearby landmarks, local reviews, and the people who work there. If you can swap the city name and nothing else changes, Google can treat it as a duplicate.
  2. Check which branch pages Google has merged. In Search Console’s page indexing report, look for pages where Google picked a different canonical than yours. That’s usually where template pages are collapsing.
  3. Close branches properly. When a branch shuts, return a real 404 or 410, or redirect to the nearest open branch. Don’t leave an empty template live.
  4. Answer the next question on the page. “Is it open on Sunday?”, “Is there parking?”, “What documents do I need for a home loan?” These are the follow-up searches fan-out looks for.
  5. Measure Google and the others separately. Use Search Console’s generative AI report for AI Overviews and AI Mode, and a separate prompt-based audit for ChatGPT and Gemini.

What’s still unclear

  • No official slides or recording. Everything public comes from attendee posts and photos.
  • Several figures have a single source. They’re in the table above with that caveat.
  • No new products were announced. Features mentioned on the day already existed.
  • Not everyone was impressed. Some Indian SEOs criticised the lack of local community speakers and called parts of the content out of touch, while others found the sessions clear and practical.

Get the 160+ slide deck

160+ slides from Search Central Live Bengaluru in one deck, so you can go through the sessions yourself and share them with your team.

  • 168 slides
  • PowerPoint
  • 12 MB
  • Free
Download the deck

If the download doesn’t start, wait a minute and try again.

Preview of the Search Central Live Bengaluru 2026 slide deck, 160+ slides

FAQ

When and where was Search Central Live Bengaluru 2026?

On 30 October 2026, from 10:00 to 17:30, at the Radisson Blu Bengaluru Outer Ring Road. It was free, by application only, held in English, and the first Search Central Live in India since 2023.

What did Google say about GEO and AEO?

That good SEO is good GEO and AEO. AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on Google’s core ranking and indexing systems, so there’s no separate optimisation method for Google’s AI features.

Does Google use llms.txt?

No. Google Search doesn’t use llms.txt. You can keep one for other services, but it neither helps nor hurts in Google Search.

Is there a recording of Search Central Live Bengaluru 2026?

No. The event wasn’t streamed or recorded, and Google hasn’t published the official slides. Recaps are based on attendee notes and photos.

Sources

One note a week.

Practical notes on SEO, product and AI search from Kishore Rajaram, a product manager in Chennai.

Subscribe Back to Rocky Shore