AI search and GEO terms

AI visibility, GEO, AEO, LLM citations and how AI assistants choose sources. 23 terms, each with what it means, why it matters for SEO and what to do about it.

AI citations

AI citations are the links an AI assistant shows as sources for its answer. Being cited means your page helped build the answer.

AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot)

AI crawlers are bots that AI companies use to collect web content for model training or for AI search answers, such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot.

AI Overviews

AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that Google shows at the top of some search results, with links to the web pages they draw on.

AI SEO agent

An AI SEO agent is an AI assistant that uses SEO tools by itself to research, analyse and report, working through multiple steps towards a goal.

AI visibility

AI visibility is how often and how prominently AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity mention your brand or cite your site.

Answer engine optimization (AEO)

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is optimising content so search features and AI assistants use it to answer questions directly.

Brand mentions

Brand mentions are references to your brand name on other websites or in AI answers, with or without a link to your site.

ChatGPT search

ChatGPT search is the feature that lets ChatGPT search the web and answer with up-to-date information and links to its sources.

Entity

An entity is a distinct, identifiable thing, such as a person, place, organisation or product, that search engines and AI models recognise.

Generative engine optimization (GEO)

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of improving how often AI-generated answers mention your brand and cite your pages.

Google AI Mode

Google AI Mode is a conversational search mode where a Gemini model answers your query in full, with follow-up questions and links to sources.

Grounding

Grounding is tying an AI model’s answer to real, retrievable sources, such as search results, so it is current and can be checked.

Knowledge Graph

The Knowledge Graph is Google’s database of entities and the facts and relationships between them, used to power knowledge panels and answers.

Large language model (LLM)

A large language model (LLM) is an AI model trained on huge amounts of text to predict and generate language, such as GPT, Gemini or Claude.

LLM SEO

LLM SEO is optimising your content and brand so large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude mention and cite you in their answers.

llms.txt

llms.txt is a proposed Markdown file at a site’s root that summarises its content for AI tools. Google Search ignores it.

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets AI assistants connect to outside tools and data, such as an SEO platform’s API.

Perplexity

Perplexity is an AI answer engine that searches the web for each question and writes an answer with numbered citations to its sources.

Prompt tracking

Prompt tracking is running a fixed set of questions through AI assistants on a schedule to track brand mentions, citations and position.

Query fan-out

Query fan-out is when an AI search system splits one question into many related searches, runs them together and combines the results.

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is when an AI system fetches relevant documents first and then writes its answer from them.

Semantic search

Semantic search is search that matches the meaning and intent behind a query, not just its exact words.

Share of voice

Share of voice is your share of the visibility in a market, such as the share of AI answers or search clicks that go to you versus competitors.