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Glossary

The plain-English AI search glossary.

AI search picked up a lot of jargon fast. Here's every term that matters, explained the way we'd explain it to a friend – no computer-science degree required.

A
AEO Answer Engine Optimization
Shaping your content so answer engines like ChatGPT and Google's AI can lift a clear, correct answer about your business. It's a close cousin of GEO. See how to show up in ChatGPT.
AI Overviews
Google's AI-written summary that appears at the very top of many search results, often naming a few businesses before the normal list of links. Around two billion people a month now see them.
AI visibility
How easily AI tools can find your business, understand what you do, and recommend you when someone asks for a business like yours. It's the whole point of what we do. Start with what is AI visibility.
Answer engine
Any tool that answers a question directly instead of handing back a list of links, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews.
C
Citation
When an AI names or links to a source it used for its answer. Being cited is how a business gets credit, trust and clicks from AI answers.
Crawlability
How easily an automated bot can read the pages of your website. If your key facts are hidden inside images or heavy scripts, your site has poor crawlability. More in making your website readable to AI.
E
Entity
A specific, named thing an AI recognises, like your business, a person or a place. Strong AI visibility means being a clear entity the AI actually knows and trusts.
G
GEO Generative Engine Optimization
The practice of making your business more likely to be named and recommended inside AI-generated answers. Think of it as the AI-era cousin of SEO.
Grounding
When an AI checks its answer against real, current sources instead of relying only on its memory. Grounded answers are more likely to name real, up-to-date businesses.
H
Hallucination
When an AI states something that sounds confident but is wrong or made up, such as the wrong phone number or hours for your business. See why AI gets your facts wrong.
K
Knowledge graph
A giant map of facts and how they connect that search engines and AI use to understand the world, including what your business is and does.
L
Large language model LLM
The kind of AI behind tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. It predicts helpful text based on huge amounts of training data plus what it can look up in the moment.
llms.txt
A simple text file at yoursite.com/llms.txt that gives AI a clean summary of your site and links to your key pages. See what is llms.txt.
N
NAP consistency
Keeping your Name, Address and Phone number identical everywhere online. Matching facts help AI and search engines trust and recommend you. Mismatched facts get you skipped.
P
Prompt
The question or instruction a person types into an AI tool. People often prompt AI the way they used to search, just in full sentences: "who's the best roofer near me?"
R
RAG Retrieval-Augmented Generation
A method where an AI first looks up relevant documents, then writes its answer from them. It's a big reason clear content on your website can end up quoted in AI answers.
S
Schema Structured data
Hidden labels you add to your website that spell out your facts for machines: your address, hours, reviews, services and more. It helps AI understand you without guessing.
Speakable
A type of structured data that marks which sentences are best for a voice assistant to read aloud, usually a short, clear answer to a question.
Z
Zero-click search
A search where the person gets their answer right on the results page and never clicks through to a website. AI answers are making zero-click searches more common.
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