AEO & GEO Glossary: Essential Termsfor AI Search

The practice of optimizing content to appear in AI-generated responses from systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.

Instances where AI systems reference, cite, or recommend specific brands in their generated responses.

The likelihood that an AI system will cite or reference specific content when generating responses to relevant queries.

A measure of expertise and trustworthiness in a specific subject area that influences AI citation decisions.

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness signals that influence AI content selection.

The practice of crafting effective prompts to test and understand how AI systems respond to brand-related queries.

The perceived trustworthiness and expertise of content that influences AI citation decisions.

Strategic process of optimizing content to increase the likelihood of being cited or referenced by AI systems in their responses.

Strategic approach to content creation that leverages AI tools while optimizing for AI discovery and citation across platforms.

Strategies for optimizing content to appear prominently and accurately in AI-generated responses across different platforms.

Criteria and signals that AI systems use to evaluate and prioritize content for inclusion in generated responses.

Content creation approach that prioritizes optimization for AI systems and platforms from the outset.

Specific strategies and techniques for optimizing content to appear in ChatGPT responses and recommendations.

Strategic content organization framework grouping related content around central themes to establish topical authority.

How AI systems reference and link back to original sources of information in their responses, crucial for credibility.

Strategic content creation designed to influence how AI models learn about and represent brands during their training.

SEO strategies for content that combines text, images, audio, and video for AI systems that process multiple content types.

Strategies for optimizing content to appear prominently in Perplexity AI search results with proper source attribution.

Strategies for getting AI systems to recommend your brand, products, or services when users ask for suggestions.

Optimizing content to provide direct answers to user queries in AI-powered search and answer engines.

Highlighted answer boxes in search results that often serve as source material for AI-generated responses.

Search queries where users get answers directly in search results or AI responses without clicking through to websites.

SEO practice optimizing content for voice-activated search queries through smart speakers and virtual assistants.

A metric measuring how often and favorably a brand appears in AI-generated responses across different platforms.

The percentage of AI-generated responses that cite or mention a specific source, replacing click-through rate as a key GEO metric.

The percentage of AI-generated responses in a category or topic where a brand is mentioned compared to competitors.

Data-driven analysis and recommendations for improving visibility and performance in AI-powered search engines and platforms.

Measurement of how prominently and frequently brands or content appear in AI-generated search responses across platforms.

Key performance indicators for measuring success in generative engine optimization strategies and campaigns.

How favorably or unfavorably AI systems describe and represent a brand in their generated responses.

The percentage of search queries handled by AI-powered search tools compared to traditional search engines.

Automated bots used by AI companies to crawl and index web content for training and real-time retrieval.

A proposed standard file that helps AI systems understand website content structure and important pages.

Structured data that helps AI systems understand content context, relationships, and meaning.

The process by which AI systems discover, process, and store web content for use in generating responses.

Configuration file that controls which AI crawlers can access your website content.

Digital marketing discipline focused on improving website visibility and ranking in search engine results through technical, content, and authority optimization.

How AI systems prioritize and order content when generating responses, determining which sources get cited.

The process where AI systems decompose a single user query into multiple sub-queries to gather comprehensive information.

Google's AI-generated summary that appears at the top of search results, synthesizing information from multiple sources.

Search technology that understands meaning and intent rather than just matching keywords.

AI technology that enables machines to understand, interpret, and generate human language.

AI systems trained on vast text data that power chatbots, search assistants, and content generation.

When AI systems generate false, inaccurate, or fabricated information that appears plausible but is not factually correct.

Search interactions using natural language questions and follow-up queries rather than keyword-based searches.

Continuous tracking of how AI systems mention, describe, and recommend brands across platforms.

Process of identifying missing content opportunities by analyzing what AI systems cite for relevant queries.

Using AI visibility data to understand competitor positioning, strategies, and performance in AI search.