GEO & AI Search Glossary

The GEO and AI search glossary

Clear, answer-first definitions of the terms behind AI search and Generative Engine Optimization. Each entry explains what the term means, why it matters, and how it connects to getting recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.

AI crawler An AI crawler is an automated bot that AI companies use to fetch web content for training models or for answering queries in real… AI Overview An AI Overview is the AI-generated summary Google shows at the top of search results, answering the query directly and citing a small set… AI search visibility AI search visibility is the degree to which your brand appears, is recommended, and is cited in answers from AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude,… AI share of voice AI share of voice (also called share of AI voice) is the percentage of AI answers in your category that mention your brand, measured… Answer engine An answer engine is a system that responds to a query with a direct, synthesized answer instead of a list of links. ChatGPT, Claude,… Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring content so answer engines can extract a direct, quotable answer to a question and surface… Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring content so answer engines can extract a direct, quotable answer to a question and surface…

Brand mention monitoring Brand mention monitoring is the ongoing tracking of when, where, and how AI engines name your brand in their answers, including the context and…

Citation rate Citation rate is how often an AI engine links to or names your site as a source in its answers, usually expressed as a…

E-E-A-T E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness: the qualities Google's guidelines use to judge content quality, and a strong proxy for what AI… Entity (SEO/GEO sense) An entity is a distinct, machine-understood thing (a company, product, person, or concept) that search and AI systems track as a node with attributes…

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of optimizing your brand and content so AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity understand,… Grounding Grounding is when an AI engine bases its answer on specific retrieved sources rather than only on its trained parameters, so the response can…

Large language model optimization (LLMO) Large language model optimization (LLMO) is the practice of shaping your content, data, and authority signals so large language models represent and recommend your… llms.txt llms.txt is a proposed plain-text file placed at the root of a website that gives AI systems a curated, easy-to-parse map of the site's…

Prompt cluster A prompt cluster is a group of related questions that buyers ask AI engines about the same need, tracked together as one unit of…

Query fan-out Query fan-out is the technique where an answer engine expands a single user question into several related sub-queries, retrieves sources for each, and synthesizes…

Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) is the technique where an AI model retrieves relevant documents at answer time and uses them to generate a response…

Schema markup Schema markup is structured data added to a web page using the schema.org vocabulary that tells search and AI systems exactly what the page… Sentiment (in AI answers) Sentiment in AI answers is whether an engine describes your brand positively, neutrally, or negatively when it mentions you, separate from whether it mentions…

Zero-click search A zero-click search is a query that is answered directly on the results page or by an AI engine, so the user gets what…

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