Glossary
AI search, GEO and list placements, defined
The words behind listicle placements, AI search and publisher income, in plain language. Each entry has its sources and the date they were checked.
Start here: the most searched terms
- Answer engine optimization (AEO)Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the work of getting your content picked as the direct answer to a question: in a featured snippet, a Google AI Overview, a voice assistant or a chat answer from ChatGPT or Perplexity.
- Generative engine optimization (GEO)Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of getting your brand and content named, described correctly and cited in answers that generative AI writes, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google's AI Overviews.
- Google AI OverviewsGoogle AI Overviews are AI-written summaries at the top of some Google search results. They answer the question in a few lines and link to the web pages that support the answer.
- ListicleA listicle is an article built as a numbered or bulleted list, such as "7 best CRM tools" or "10 Notion alternatives". Each item gets a short section of text. The word blends "list" and "article".
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- Agentic commerceAgentic commerce is shopping in which an AI agent does part of the work for a person: it finds and compares products and, with the buyer's approval, completes the purchase with the merchant.AI platforms
- Agentic searchAgentic search is AI search where the model runs the search itself: it plans, sends several queries, reads the results and decides whether to search again before it answers. Some products also act on the results.AI platforms
- AI agentAn AI agent is software that uses an AI model to pursue a goal for a user. It plans steps, uses tools such as search or a browser, and acts with some autonomy instead of only answering.AI platforms
- AI citationAn AI citation is a link or named source that an AI assistant shows with its answer to say where a fact came from. Perplexity, Google's AI features, Microsoft Copilot and the OpenAI and Claude APIs all return cited sources.AEO and GEO
- AI crawlerAn AI crawler is a bot run by an AI company that fetches web pages: to train models, to build an AI search index, or to read pages live when a user asks. Most purposes have their own bot.Technical
- AI hallucinationAn AI hallucination is a confident answer from an AI model that sounds right but is false. OpenAI calls hallucinations "plausible but false statements generated by language models".AI platforms
- AI referral trafficAI referral traffic is the visits your website gets when people click a link in an answer from an AI assistant, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot or Claude.AEO and GEO
- AI search engineAn AI search engine is a search tool that answers a question with an AI-written summary built from web pages it retrieves, usually with links to its sources, instead of only a ranked list of links.AI platforms
- AI SEOAI SEO is the work of making a brand show up in AI-powered search, such as Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search and Perplexity. The same phrase is also used for using AI tools to do SEO work.AEO and GEO
- AI visibilityAI visibility is how often, and how accurately, AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google's AI Overviews name, describe and link your brand when people ask questions about your category.AEO and GEO
- AI visibility scoreAn AI visibility score is a number a tool uses to show how often AI assistants mention your brand. There is no standard formula: some report the percentage of answers that name you, others a 0 to 100 index.AEO and GEO
- AI visibility trackingAI visibility tracking is measuring, over time, how often AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot mention your brand and cite your pages, usually by running a fixed set of prompts and reading the answers.AEO and GEO
- Alternatives pageAn alternatives page is an article that lists other products a buyer can use instead of one named product, such as "Zendesk alternatives". Vendors, review sites and independent blogs all publish them.Lists and placements
- Answer engineAn answer engine is a search tool that replies to a question with a direct answer instead of a list of links. Perplexity, ChatGPT search and Google's AI features are common examples. Optimizing for them is called answer engine optimization.AI platforms
- Answer engine optimization (AEO)Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the work of getting your content picked as the direct answer to a question: in a featured snippet, a Google AI Overview, a voice assistant or a chat answer from ChatGPT or Perplexity.AEO and GEO
- Answer-first contentAnswer-first content is writing that puts the direct answer to a question in the first sentences, then adds detail. It helps readers who skim, and gives search engines and AI assistants a clear passage to quote.AEO and GEO
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- BacklinkA backlink is a link on another website that points to your site. Google uses links to find pages and as one signal of relevance and quality. Paid backlinks should carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".Lists and placements
- Best-of listA best-of list is a ranked article that names the top options for one need, such as "best CRM for startups". Buyers read them to build a shortlist, and AI assistants often cite them in their answers.Lists and placements
- Bing Webmaster ToolsBing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft's free dashboard for site owners. It shows how a site performs in Bing search, lets you submit sitemaps and URLs, and reports how often Microsoft Copilot and Bing AI answers cite your pages.Technical
- Brand mentionA brand mention is any place where your company or product name appears in content you do not control, such as an article, review, forum post or AI answer, with or without a link to your site.AEO and GEO
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- ChatGPT searchChatGPT search is the part of OpenAI's ChatGPT that looks up current web pages while it answers and can link to the sources it used. Websites appear in it through OpenAI's search crawler, OAI-SearchBot.AI platforms
- ChatGPT-UserChatGPT-User is the user agent OpenAI uses when ChatGPT or a custom GPT visits a web page because a user asked something. It is not an automatic crawler, and OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply to it.Technical
- ClaudeBotClaudeBot is Anthropic's web crawler for model training. It collects public web content that could be used to train Anthropic's Claude models. Blocking it in robots.txt tells Anthropic to leave your site's future content out of training.Technical
- Co-citationCo-citation is when two things are cited or named together by a third source. In SEO it means your brand appears next to known brands on the same page. The idea comes from citation research in 1973.Lists and placements
- Comparison pageA comparison page (or vs page) is a web page that puts two products side by side, such as "Asana vs Trello", so a buyer can see how they differ on features, price and fit, often in a table.Lists and placements
- Content chunkingContent chunking is splitting a document into smaller pieces, called chunks, so a retrieval system can find the relevant passage and pass it to an AI model. In SEO, it also means writing in short, self-contained sections.AI platforms
- Content freshnessContent freshness is how recent and up to date a page is. Google uses freshness systems for searches where new information is expected. One large Ahrefs study found AI assistants cite somewhat newer pages than Google's organic results do.AEO and GEO
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- FAQ schemaFAQ schema is schema.org FAQPage structured data that marks up the questions and answers on a page. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in May 2026, so in Google the markup no longer earns a special result.Technical
- Featured snippetA featured snippet is a Google search result that shows a short excerpt from one web page first, above the link, to answer the question directly. Google picks the page; site owners cannot mark one.Technical
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- Generative engine optimization (GEO)Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of getting your brand and content named, described correctly and cited in answers that generative AI writes, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google's AI Overviews.AEO and GEO
- Google AI ModeGoogle AI Mode is a chat-style mode in Google Search that answers longer questions with an AI-written response, links to sources and room for follow-up questions. It runs many searches at once for each question.AI platforms
- Google AI OverviewsGoogle AI Overviews are AI-written summaries at the top of some Google search results. They answer the question in a few lines and link to the web pages that support the answer.AI platforms
- Google-ExtendedGoogle-Extended is a robots.txt token, not a separate crawler. It lets sites choose whether content Google crawls may be used to train Gemini models and to ground Gemini Apps. Google says it does not affect Google Search.Technical
- GPTBotGPTBot is OpenAI's web crawler for model training. It collects public pages that may be used to train OpenAI's foundation models. Blocking it in robots.txt asks OpenAI not to train on your content, but keeps ChatGPT search open.Technical
- GroundingGrounding in AI is connecting a language model's answer to outside sources, such as web search results or internal documents, so the answer rests on that material and can cite it, not only on training data.AI platforms
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- IndexNowIndexNow is an open protocol that lets a website tell search engines right away that a URL was added, changed or deleted. Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz and Yep take part. Google is not listed.Technical
- ItemList schemaItemList schema is structured data that marks a page or part of a page as a list of items, each with a position. It uses the schema.org ItemList type with ListItem entries, and fits ranked lists such as best-of articles.Technical
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- Knowledge graphA knowledge graph is a knowledge base that stores entities, such as companies, people and products, as nodes and the facts that link them as edges. Google's Knowledge Graph is the best-known example in search.Technical
- Knowledge panelA knowledge panel is the information box Google shows in search results for a person, place, organization or thing. Google creates it automatically from its Knowledge Graph when enough information exists on the open web.Technical
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- Large language model (LLM)A large language model (LLM) is an AI model trained on very large amounts of text to predict the next word or word piece, called a token. AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are built on LLMs.AI platforms
- LinkedIn creator sponsorshipA LinkedIn creator sponsorship is a deal in which a brand pays a LinkedIn creator to post about its product on the creator's own profile. The post goes out from the creator, not from the brand's page or LinkedIn Ads.Publishers
- ListicleA listicle is an article built as a numbered or bulleted list, such as "7 best CRM tools" or "10 Notion alternatives". Each item gets a short section of text. The word blends "list" and "article".Lists and placements
- LLM optimization (LLMO)LLM optimization (LLMO) is the work of making large language models such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini mention, describe and cite your brand correctly when people ask them questions about your category.AEO and GEO
- llms.txtllms.txt is a proposed Markdown file at a website's root (/llms.txt) that gives AI tools a short summary of the site and links to its most useful pages. It is a proposal, not an adopted standard.Technical
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- OAI-SearchBotOAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's crawler for ChatGPT search. It finds pages that ChatGPT can show and link in its search answers. OpenAI says sites that block it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers.Technical
- Organization schemaOrganization schema is structured data, usually JSON-LD on a home page, that tells search engines who a company is: its name, logo, website, contact details and official profiles elsewhere. It uses the schema.org Organization type.Technical
- Original researchOriginal research in content marketing is new data a company collects and publishes itself, such as a survey, a price study or a test. Others can cite it because the findings exist nowhere else.AEO and GEO
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- People Also Ask (PAA)People Also Ask (PAA) is a box in Google search results with questions related to your search. Each question opens to a short answer from a web page, with a link to it. Google picks the questions.Technical
- PerplexityPerplexity is an AI search engine that searches the web in real time and answers in plain language, with clickable citations to the pages it used. The company calls it an answer engine.AI platforms
- PerplexityBotPerplexityBot is Perplexity's web crawler for search. It finds and links websites in Perplexity's answers. Perplexity says it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models, and recommends allowing it in robots.txt.Technical
- Prompt trackingPrompt tracking is running a fixed set of buyer questions through AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini on a schedule, and recording whether your brand is named or linked and which sources the answers cite.AEO and GEO
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- Reddit SEOReddit SEO is the work of getting your brand named, fairly and openly, in the Reddit threads that rank in Google and that AI assistants cite. It means joining real conversations, not posting links.AEO and GEO
- Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is a method where an AI system first retrieves relevant text from a knowledge source, such as a document index or the web, and then gives it to a language model to write the answer.AI platforms
- robots.txtrobots.txt is a plain text file at the root of a website that tells crawlers which URLs they may access. Crawlers that follow the standard read it before crawling. It is a request, not a lock.Technical
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- sameAssameAs is a schema.org property that links an entity to other web pages that unambiguously identify it, such as its Wikipedia or Wikidata entry or official social profiles. It tells machines these pages describe the same thing.Technical
- Schema markupSchema markup is structured data written with the schema.org vocabulary. It labels what a page is about, such as an organization, an article, a product or a set of questions, so search engines can read it as data.Technical
- Search engine optimization (SEO)Search engine optimization (SEO) is the work of helping search engines such as Google and Bing find, understand and rank your pages, so people searching for what you offer see them in the results and visit your site.Technical
- Search everywhere optimizationSearch everywhere optimization is SEO stretched to every place people search: Google and Bing, but also YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest and AI assistants. The goal is to reach your audience wherever they look for answers.AEO and GEO
- SERPA SERP (search engine results page) is the page a search engine shows after a search. On Google it can hold text results, ads, AI Overviews, featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, images and videos.Technical
- Software review siteA software review site is a website where users rate and review business software, such as G2. Buyers use it to compare tools by category, and vendors pay for profiles, ads and review programs.Publishers
- Structured dataStructured data is code on a web page that describes its content in a standard format, so search engines can read facts such as the organization, author, product or price. Most sites write it with schema.org terms in JSON-LD.Technical
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