Glossary
GEO & AEO terms, explained
The vocabulary of AI search — in plain English.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Structuring and earning content so AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity) name and cite your brand inside the answers they generate.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Optimizing content so an answer engine can extract a clean, correct answer from your page and attribute it to you — the source layer of GEO.
AI citation
When an AI answer explicitly cites your website as a source for its information, usually with a link. The strongest form of AI visibility.
Brand mention
When an AI answer references your brand by name in its text, without necessarily linking your site as a source.
AI Overview
Google's AI-generated answer shown above the blue links, stitched from web sources it cites.
Answer capsule
A self-contained 40–60 word answer at the top of a section — the snippet AI engines preferentially extract and quote.
llms.txt
A plain-text/markdown file that hands AI crawlers a curated map and summary of your most important pages, lowering extraction effort.
Share of voice (AI)
How often your brand appears in AI answers for a set of queries, relative to competitors.
Entity authority
The strength and consistency of your brand as a verifiable entity (schema, sameAs links, third-party corroboration) that AI can trust and attribute.
Structured data (schema)
Machine-readable JSON-LD markup (Organization, FAQPage, Article…) that lets engines parse and cite your facts with near-zero effort.