GEO & AI search glossary

Plain-English definitions of the Generative Engine Optimization terms that decide whether AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini mention and cite your brand.

• AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is optimizing content to be the direct answer an AI or search engine returns to a question…
• AI hallucinationAn AI hallucination is when a model states something false or invented with confidence — including wrong facts about your brand…
• AI visibilityAI visibility is how often and how prominently AI assistants mention, cite, or recommend your brand when users ask buying…
• Answer engineAn answer engine responds to a query with a synthesized answer instead of a list of links — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and…
• Buying promptA buying prompt is a real purchase-intent question a customer asks an AI assistant — e.g. 'best CRM for small agencies' or…
• Citation rateCitation rate is the share of AI answers that link to or name your website as a source. It's stricter than a mention: being…
• Entity clarityEntity clarity is how unambiguously an AI can identify what your brand is, what it does, and how it relates to other entities.…
• GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of optimizing your content and brand so AI answer engines — ChatGPT…
• Google AI OverviewsGoogle AI Overviews are the AI-generated summaries shown above traditional results for many searches. They synthesize and cite a…
• GroundingGrounding is when an AI model bases its answer on retrieved, real sources (web pages, documents) rather than only its training…
• llms.txtllms.txt is a plain-text file at your domain root that gives AI crawlers a curated map of your most important, citation-worthy…
• Mention rateMention rate is the percentage of AI answers to your tracked prompts that name your brand at all — whether or not they link to…
• Query fan-outQuery fan-out is when an answer engine expands one user question into several sub-queries, retrieves sources for each, and…
• RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is the technique answer engines use to fetch relevant documents at query time and feed them…
• Share of voice (AI search)Share of voice in AI search is the percentage of buying-question answers that mention your brand versus competitors, per engine.…
• Structured dataStructured data (schema.org markup) is machine-readable code that labels what a page is — an article, product, FAQ…