Home/Glossary
Glossary
AI search & SEO terms, defined.
Every term you need to operate in 2026 search — from GEO and AEO to AI share of voice and schema markup. Definitions written for operators, not introductions for beginners.
A–Z
The terms.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| AEO — Answer Engine Optimization | Optimizing content so answer engines (Google featured snippets, voice assistants, AI chat) quote your page directly as the answer. Overlaps heavily with GEO and LLM SEO. See AEO guide. |
| AI Citation | An AI engine naming your brand as a recommendation in its response, with or without an inline hyperlink. The unit of measurement for AI visibility. |
| AI Overview — formerly SGE | Google's AI-generated answer block shown above traditional results for many queries. Powered by Gemini; pulls from the same Google index that ranks blue links. See AI Overview guide. |
| AI Share of Voice — AI SoV | Your brand's AI citation rate relative to competitors, per engine and per query. Computed as your citations ÷ all branded citations for the query. See AI SoV guide. |
| AI Visibility | How often, and how prominently, AI assistants name your brand in their answers. Measured per engine, per query. See AI Visibility Tracking. |
| Anchor Text | The clickable visible text of a hyperlink. Search engines use anchor text as a topical signal for the linked page. |
| Backlink | A hyperlink from another website pointing to yours. The canonical off-page SEO signal; also feeds AI engines' source ranking. |
| BingBot | Microsoft Bing's web crawler. Bing's index powers ChatGPT search, making BingBot critical for ChatGPT visibility. |
| ChatGPT | OpenAI's large language model assistant. As of 2026 it serves an estimated billion-plus weekly queries, with live web access via Bing search and SearchGPT. |
| ChatGPT Search | OpenAI's search mode inside ChatGPT — live web retrieval with inline citations. Different from ChatGPT's training-data answers. |
| Claude — Anthropic | Anthropic's large language model family. Skews enterprise and developer audiences; uses curated training data plus live web retrieval via Claude-Web. See Claude Citation Tracking. |
| ClaudeBot | Anthropic's web crawler. Allow in robots.txt if you want to be cited by Claude. |
| Core Web Vitals | Google's page-experience metrics — LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift), INP (Interaction to Next Paint). A ranking factor. |
| Crawler | An automated bot that fetches web pages for indexing — Googlebot, Bingbot, GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, etc. |
| Domain Rating — DR | Ahrefs' 0–100 score estimating a domain's link-graph authority. Similar metrics: Moz DA, SEMrush AS. |
| E-E-A-T | Google's quality framework: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Increasingly weighted in AI Overview source selection. |
| Entity SEO | Optimizing for how engines understand your brand as an entity — through Knowledge Graph, Wikidata, consistent NAP, schema Organization markup, and cross-platform identity. |
| Featured Snippet | Google's quoted-answer box above the SERP. The original answer-engine surface; a precursor to AI Overview. |
| GEO — Generative Engine Optimization | The practice of being recommended inside AI-generated answers — ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overview. Sister to SEO; different target surface, overlapping tactics. See GEO guide. |
| Gemini | Google's flagship large language model family. Powers consumer Gemini, Gemini Pro, Deep Research, and Google AI Overview. See Gemini SEO. |
| Google-Extended | The crawler control Google uses to opt content into (or out of) Gemini/Bard/AI Overview training. Allow in robots.txt to be visible to Gemini. |
| Googlebot | Google's primary web crawler — feeds the index that powers Google Search and AI Overview retrieval. |
| GPTBot | OpenAI's web crawler. Allow in robots.txt to be visible to ChatGPT. |
| HARO — Help A Reporter Out | Service connecting journalists to sources. Replies appear in major publications, generating high-authority backlinks and entity mentions. |
| Hreflang | HTML attribute that signals a page's language/region variants to search engines. Important for international SEO. |
| Internal Linking | Links between pages within your own domain. Distributes PageRank and topical signal; critical for both SEO and GEO. |
| JSON-LD | JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data — the preferred Schema.org markup format embedded in <script type="application/ld+json">. |
| Knowledge Graph | Google's database of entities (people, places, organizations, concepts) and the relationships between them. Surfaces as knowledge panels in search. |
| LLM — Large Language Model | A neural network trained on massive text corpora. The substrate behind ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and most modern AI search engines. |
| LLM SEO — AI SEO | The broader practice of optimizing a brand's presence inside large language model and AI search results. Encompasses GEO and AEO. See LLM SEO guide. |
| llms.txt | A text file at the root of a domain (`/llms.txt`) that summarizes the site for AI consumers. Emerging standard for AI-friendly content publishing. |
| Long-Tail Query | A specific, low-volume search query — often a complete question. Programmatic SEO and GEO often win disproportionately on long-tail. |
| NAP — Name, Address, Phone | The trio of business identity facts used in local SEO and entity consistency. |
| OG / Open Graph | Meta tags (`og:title`, `og:description`, `og:image`) controlling how a page renders when shared on social platforms. |
| PageRank | Google's foundational link-graph algorithm. The original "links as votes" idea; still informs how authority flows. |
| PageSpeed Insights | Google's tool for measuring page speed and Core Web Vitals. Free, no auth needed. |
| Perplexity | Conversational AI search engine with inline citations. Strong audience of researchers and high-intent buyers. See Perplexity SEO. |
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity's web crawler. Must be allowed in robots.txt for Perplexity to crawl and cite your pages. |
| Programmatic SEO — pSEO | Generating hundreds or thousands of unique landing pages from one template plus a dataset. See pSEO playbook. |
| Prompt | The user query sent to an LLM or AI search engine. In GEO measurement, the "prompts" are the buyer questions whose answers contain your brand or not. |
| RAG — Retrieval-Augmented Generation | The architecture LLMs use to combine training-data knowledge with live retrieved sources. Most modern AI search engines run RAG. |
| Robots.txt | Text file at the root of a domain specifying which crawlers can access which paths. In 2026, also the primary way to allow or block AI crawlers. |
| Schema Markup | Structured data (JSON-LD) following Schema.org vocabulary, helping search and AI engines understand a page's entities, facts and relationships. See schema markup playbook. |
| SEO — Search Engine Optimization | The practice of getting a page to rank on search engine results pages — historically Google and Bing. |
| SERP — Search Engine Results Page | The page of search results shown after a query. In 2026, often topped by an AI Overview answer block. |
| SGE — Search Generative Experience | The historical name for what is now Google AI Overview. The feature renamed and went GA in 2024–2025. |
| Sitemap.xml | An XML file listing every URL on a domain, with priority and changefreq hints for crawlers. Submitted to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster. |
| Structured Data | Synonym for schema markup — data formatted according to a known vocabulary (Schema.org, Microformats) so machines can extract it reliably. |
| Technical SEO | Crawlability, indexing, site speed, mobile-friendliness, schema, sitemaps — the foundational work that lets pages rank at all. |
| Topical Authority | Comprehensive coverage of a subject. AI engines reward depth on a narrow topic over shallow breadth. |
| Wikidata | The Wikimedia knowledge base. Curated facts here feed Knowledge Graph, LLM training data, and entity coherence signals. |
| Wikipedia | The largest open encyclopedia. Wikipedia entity pages are among the strongest entity-coherence signals for LLMs. |
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