Glossary

The AI search, SEO and automation glossary.

Plain-English definitions of the terms we work in every day, from generative engine optimization to marketing mix modeling. Written to answer the question first, for humans and for the AI engines that now do the answering.

AI Search

Generative Engine OptimizationGEO

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of getting a brand cited inside AI-generated answers from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Instead of only ranking a page, GEO optimises the facts, structure, entities and citations that generative engines pull from when they write an answer.

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Answer Engine OptimizationAEO

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is optimising content so it is chosen as the direct answer by answer engines: AI chatbots, voice assistants and featured snippets. It means structuring pages around real questions, leading with a concise answer, and using schema so machines can extract and reuse your response.

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AI Search Visibility

AI Search Visibility is how findable and how frequently cited a brand is across AI-powered search: Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, alongside classic organic search. It is the combined outcome of SEO, GEO and AEO, and is tracked as a measurable score rather than a single ranking position.

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AI Visibility Score

An AI Visibility Score is a single metric that measures how often and how prominently a brand appears in AI-generated answers. It combines share of voice in AI responses, citation counts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, and AI referral traffic, so progress can be tracked month over month.

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LLM OptimizationLLMO

LLM Optimization is preparing a website and its content so large language models can read, understand and reuse it accurately. It covers clean server-rendered HTML, structured data, consistent facts, an llms.txt map and quotable, well-sourced content, so models cite the brand correctly rather than guessing or omitting it.

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llms.txt

llms.txt is a plain-text file placed at a website root that gives AI crawlers a curated map of the site: the most important pages with one-line descriptions. It helps large language models find and cite the canonical answers quickly, much as robots.txt and sitemap.xml guide traditional search crawlers.

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