AI search glossary.
What each AI search term means, with an example from a real job.
Answer engine optimization (AEO)
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the work of making a business easy for AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews to read, check and recommend when someone asks a question.
Read more →Generative engine optimization (GEO)
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is another name for getting a brand cited in answers written by AI tools. Most people use GEO and AEO to mean the same thing.
Read more →AI Overview
An AI Overview is the AI-written summary Google shows above its normal search results, with links to the pages it drew from.
Read more →Entity
An entity is a specific, identifiable thing (a business, person, place or product) that search engines and AI tools recognise and keep facts about.
Read more →Structured data (schema)
Structured data, often called schema, is code on a web page that labels facts (business name, services, hours, prices, reviews) in a format search engines and AI tools read directly.
Read more →Buying question
A buying question is a question a customer asks shortly before hiring someone, such as “best HVAC company near West Chester”. It names a need and a place, not a specific business.
Read more →Share of voice (AI)
Share of voice in AI search is your mentions divided by every business mention across a fixed set of AI answers. It shows how much of the conversation is about you.
Read more →Appearance rate
Appearance rate is the share of tracked questions where an AI answer names your business at least once.
Read more →Prompt set
A prompt set is the fixed list of questions put to AI tools every month to measure whether they name a business. It is agreed before work starts and versioned when it changes.
Read more →AI citation
An AI citation is a link or source an AI answer shows to back up what it says. Being cited is not the same as being recommended.
Read more →AI crawler
An AI crawler is a program that AI companies use to read websites, such as GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot and Google-Extended.
Read more →llms.txt
llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website that gives AI tools a short summary of the business and a list of its most important pages.
Read more →Google Business Profile
A Google Business Profile is the free listing that shows a business on Google Maps and in local search, with its hours, services, photos and reviews.
Read more →NAP consistency
NAP consistency means a business’s name, address and phone number are written the same way everywhere they appear online.
Read more →Third-party mention
A third-party mention is your business named on a site you don’t own, such as a directory, local news story, review site, association page or community forum.
Read more →Grounding (live web lookup)
Grounding is when an AI tool looks things up on the live web, or in a search index, before it writes an answer, instead of relying only on what it learned in training.
Read more →Zero-click search
A zero-click search is one where the person gets their answer on the results page or in the AI reply and never clicks through to a website.
Read more →Google AI Mode
Google AI Mode is a conversational search mode in Google that answers with an AI-written reply and follow-up questions instead of a list of links.
Read more →See what AI says about you.
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