Glossary
AI search and GEO, defined
40 terms you will run into while working on AI visibility, defined in plain English with no marketing.
A
- AI OverviewsAI Overviews are Google's AI-generated summaries shown above traditional search results, synthesised from web sources with links to those sources.
- AI referral trafficAI referral traffic is the visits a website receives from links inside AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Copilot, identified in web analytics by the referring source.
- AI visibilityAI visibility is how often and how prominently a brand appears in answers generated by AI assistants for the questions its buyers ask. It is usually expressed as a rate: the share of tracked answers that named the brand.
- Answer engineAn answer engine is a system that responds to a question with a direct, synthesised answer rather than a list of links. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot and Claude are all answer engines in this sense.
- Answer engine optimization (AEO)Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring content so a search or answer engine can use it directly as the answer to a question, rather than as a link the user has to click.
- Answer varianceAnswer variance is the tendency of an AI assistant to give different answers to the same question on different occasions, even with identical input. It is inherent to how generative models sample text.
B
- Brand accuracyBrand accuracy is whether an AI assistant describes a brand's products, pricing, positioning and category correctly. A brand can be highly visible and consistently described wrongly.
- Branded promptA branded prompt is a tracked question that names your brand, such as a comparison with a competitor or a question about your pricing. A non-branded prompt asks about the category without naming you.
- Buyer-intent promptA buyer-intent prompt is a question someone asks an AI assistant while actively evaluating options, such as a comparison, a "best for" query, or a pricing question. These prompts sit closest to a purchase decision.
C
- CitationA citation is a source an AI engine references when generating an answer, usually shown as a link or footnote. In AI visibility measurement, a citation of your domain means the engine drew on your content to build its response.
- Citation rateCitation rate is the share of tracked AI answers that cited a brand's own domain as a source. It measures whether engines treat your content as evidence, not just whether they know your name.
- Competitive benchmarking (AI)Competitive benchmarking in AI search is measuring your brand's presence in AI answers against a named set of competitors, using the same questions, engines and schedule for every brand.
- Content gap (AI search)A content gap in AI search is a topic or source where competitors are represented in AI answers and you are not. Unlike a traditional keyword gap, the page in question is often not on your own domain.
- CrawlabilityCrawlability is how easily an automated agent can reach and read a page's content. Pages behind logins, heavy client-side rendering, or restrictive robots rules are effectively invisible to AI systems.
G
- Generative engine optimization (GEO)Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of improving how AI assistants describe and recommend a brand when they generate an answer. It targets the content of the answer itself, rather than a position in a list of links.
- Geo-targeting (AI visibility)Geo-targeting in AI visibility measurement means querying an AI assistant as though from a specific country or region, so the answer reflects what a buyer in that market would actually be shown.
- Google AI ModeGoogle AI Mode is the conversational tab in Google Search that answers a question with a longer AI-generated response and follow-up questions, built from many background searches and linked to its sources.
- GroundingGrounding is the practice of tying a model's generated answer to specific retrieved sources, so its claims can be traced back to evidence rather than produced from model memory alone.
M
- MentionA mention is an occurrence of a brand name in the text of an AI-generated answer. It is distinct from a citation, which is a reference to the brand's website as a source behind that answer.
- Missing linksMissing links are the specific pages an AI engine cites when answering a question where your competitors appear and you do not. Each one is a concrete gap between the sources a model trusts and the sources that represent you.
P
- Personalization (AI answers)Personalization is when an AI assistant tailors its answer using signals about the specific user, such as conversation history, saved memory, account settings or location.
- Position distributionPosition distribution is the spread of a brand's in-answer ranks across all tracked answers, showing how often it places first, second, third and so on.
- Prompt (tracked)A tracked prompt is a single question monitored over time to measure how AI assistants answer it, for example "best CRM for startups". It is the unit of measurement in AI visibility, roughly analogous to a keyword in SEO.
R
- Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)Retrieval-augmented generation is a technique where a language model retrieves relevant documents at query time and uses them to generate its answer, rather than relying only on knowledge learned during training.
- robots.txt (AI crawlers)robots.txt is a file at a site's root that tells crawlers which paths they may request. AI companies operate their own named crawlers, such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot, which can be allowed or disallowed individually.
S
- Schema markupSchema markup is structured data added to a web page, usually as JSON-LD, that describes the page's content in a machine-readable vocabulary so search and answer engines can interpret it unambiguously.
- Search engine optimization (SEO)Search engine optimization is the practice of improving a page's position in a search engine's ranked results, so more people click through to the site.
- Sentiment (AI answers)Sentiment in AI visibility is whether a brand is described positively, neutrally or negatively within a generated answer. It captures how a brand is characterised, separately from whether it appeared.
- Share of voice (AI)Share of voice in AI search is the proportion of tracked answers a brand appeared in, relative to every other brand that appeared in those answers. It converts an absolute visibility number into a competitive position.