AI Visibility Glossary

AI Impressions

AI impressions estimate how many times your brand appeared in AI-generated answers across tracked prompts and platforms. Full definition and related terms.

AI Overviews

Google AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries shown at the top of many Google results. Full definition and related terms.

AI Referral Traffic

AI referral traffic is website visits that come from someone clicking a link in an AI assistant's answer. Full definition and related terms.

AI Search

AI search is the use of AI systems to answer queries with a synthesized response rather than a list of links. Full definition and related terms.

AI Visibility

AI visibility is the degree to which a brand is named, cited, or recommended inside AI-generated answers. Full definition and related terms.

Answer Engine

An answer engine responds to a query with a direct answer rather than a ranked list of links. Full definition and related terms.

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is structuring content so answer engines can extract and present it directly. Full definition and related terms.

Answer-First Content

Answer-first content leads with a direct answer to the question before adding detail and context. Full definition and related terms.

Article Schema

Article schema is structured data that describes a page as an article, with fields like headline, author, and dates. Full definition and related terms.

Average Rank

Average rank is where a brand tends to appear when an AI answer orders several brands, averaged across prompts. Full definition and related terms.

Brand Coverage

Brand coverage is the share of your tracked prompts where your brand appears in the AI answer at all. Full definition and related terms.

Brand Mention

A brand mention in AI search is when an AI names your brand in its answer. Full definition and how it differs from a citation.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is OpenAI's conversational AI assistant, which answers from training and optional live web search. Full definition and related terms.

Citation

An AI citation is when an AI references or links to a webpage as a source for its answer. Full definition and related terms.

Citation Hook

A citation hook is a quotable, self-contained piece of content, such as a statistic or definition, that AI systems readily cite. Full definition and related terms.

Citation Share

Citation share is the proportion of cited sources in AI answers for a topic that point to your domain rather than competitors. Full definition and related terms.

Claude

Claude is Anthropic's conversational AI assistant, which answers from training and, when enabled, live web search with citations. Full definition and related terms.

ClaudeBot

ClaudeBot is Anthropic's web crawler, used to gather content for Claude. Full definition and related terms.

Content Cluster

A content cluster is a group of related pages, anchored by a pillar page, that together cover a topic in depth. Full definition and related terms.

Content Freshness

Content freshness is how recently content was published or meaningfully updated, a notable factor in AI citations. Full definition and related terms.

Content Gap Analysis

Content gap analysis identifies the prompts where competitors appear and you do not, and what content would close the gap. Full definition and related terms.

Conversational Search

Conversational search is searching through back-and-forth dialogue with an AI assistant rather than typing keywords. Full definition and related terms.

Crawlability

Crawlability is how easily automated crawlers, including AI crawlers, can access and read your site's content. Full definition and related terms.

Digital PR

Digital PR is earning coverage and mentions on reputable third-party sites to build brand authority. Full definition and related terms.

E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, the qualities Google uses to assess content quality. Full definition and related terms.

Embeddings

Embeddings are numerical representations of text that capture meaning, letting AI systems compare content by similarity. Full definition and related terms.

Entity

An entity is a distinct, identifiable thing, such as a brand, person, or product, that AI and search systems recognize and reason about. Full definition and related terms.

Entity SEO

Entity SEO is optimizing for how search and AI systems understand your brand as a distinct entity, not just for keywords. Full definition and related terms.

FAQPage Schema

FAQPage schema is structured data that marks up a list of questions and answers on a page. Full definition and related terms.

Featured Snippet

A featured snippet is a short answer Google pulls from a page and displays at the top of search results. Full definition and related terms.

Fine-Tuning

Fine-tuning is further training a pretrained AI model on a narrower dataset to specialize its behavior. Full definition and related terms.

Fluency Optimization

Fluency optimization is improving the clarity and readability of content so AI systems can parse and surface it more easily. Full definition and related terms.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) improves how often a brand is surfaced and cited by generative AI engines. Full definition and related terms.

Google AI Mode

Google AI Mode is Google's conversational AI search experience that uses query fan-out across Google's index. Full definition and related terms.

Google Gemini

Google Gemini is Google's AI assistant, which grounds many answers in Google's search index. Full definition and related terms.

Google-Extended

Google-Extended is a control that lets sites manage whether their content is used to improve Google's generative AI, separate from search indexing. Full definition and related terms.

GPTBot

GPTBot is OpenAI's web crawler, used to gather content for training and retrieval. Full definition and related terms.

Grok

Grok is xAI's conversational AI assistant, integrated with X and drawing on real-time posts plus the web. Full definition and related terms.

Grounding

Grounding is basing an AI answer on specific external sources rather than the model's memory alone. Full definition and related terms.

Hallucination

A hallucination is when an AI generates confident but false or unsupported information. Full definition and related terms.

HowTo Schema

HowTo schema is structured data that describes a set of steps to complete a task. Full definition and related terms.

Hub and Spoke

Hub and spoke is a content structure where a central hub page links out to and back from related spoke pages. Full definition and related terms.

Indexability

Indexability is whether a crawled page is eligible to be stored in a search index and surfaced in results. Full definition and related terms.

Information Gain

Information gain is the new or unique value a page adds beyond what already exists on a topic. Full definition and related terms.

JSON-LD

JSON-LD is the recommended format for adding structured data to a page using a script block in the HTML. Full definition and related terms.

Knowledge Graph

A knowledge graph is a structured network of entities and the relationships between them that search and AI systems use to reason. Full definition and related terms.

Large Language Model (LLM)

A large language model is an AI model trained on vast amounts of text to generate language, the technology behind AI assistants. Full definition and related terms.

LLM Optimization (LLMO)

LLM optimization (LLMO) is the practice of making a website technically readable and retrievable by large language models. Full definition and related terms.

llms.txt

llms.txt is a proposed root file that aims to tell AI systems which pages matter most. Full definition and what the evidence shows.

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft's AI assistant, which grounds answers in Bing's search index. Full definition and related terms.

Organization Schema

Organization schema is structured data describing a company, including name, logo, and sameAs links to its profiles. Full definition and related terms.

Perplexity

Perplexity is an AI answer engine built around search that retrieves and cites web sources for nearly every answer. Full definition and related terms.

PerplexityBot

PerplexityBot is Perplexity's web crawler, used to index content its answer engine can cite. Full definition and related terms.

Pillar Page

A pillar page is a comprehensive page covering a broad topic that links out to detailed cluster pages on subtopics. Full definition and related terms.

Position-Adjusted Word Count

Position-adjusted word count is the GEO research metric measuring how much of an AI answer a source contributes, weighted by where it appears. Full definition and related terms.

Prompt

A prompt is the question or instruction a user gives an AI assistant to get a response. Full definition and related terms.

Prompt Research

Prompt research is the process of discovering the prompts your audience actually asks AI assistants. Full definition and related terms.

Prompt Set

A prompt set is the defined collection of prompts you track to measure AI visibility over time. Full definition and related terms.

Prompt Volume

Prompt volume is an estimate of how often real users ask a given question or type of question of AI assistants. Full definition and related terms.

Query Fan-Out

Query fan-out is when an AI breaks one question into several searches and synthesizes the results. Full definition and related terms.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

RAG is when an AI searches an external source, retrieves documents, and uses them to ground its answer. Full definition and related terms.

robots.txt

robots.txt is a file at a site's root that tells crawlers, including AI crawlers, which parts of the site they may access. Full definition and related terms.

sameAs Property

The sameAs property is a structured data field that links your site to your official profiles elsewhere on the web. Full definition and related terms.

Schema Markup

Schema markup is structured data using the Schema.org vocabulary to describe page content to machines. Full definition and related terms.

SearchGPT

SearchGPT is OpenAI's AI search experience, now part of ChatGPT search, which retrieves and cites live web results. Full definition and related terms.

Semantic Chunking

Semantic chunking is structuring content into self-contained passages, each covering one idea, so AI systems can extract clean answers. Full definition and related terms.

Semantic Search

Semantic search retrieves content by meaning rather than exact keyword match, using embeddings to compare intent. Full definition and related terms.

Sentiment

Sentiment in AI answers is whether an AI describes a brand positively, neutrally, or negatively. Full definition and related terms.

Share of Model

Share of model is a brand's AI visibility measured separately for each AI platform. Full definition and how it differs from share of voice.

Share of Voice

Share of voice in AI search is your portion of category brand mentions versus competitors across tracked prompts. Full definition and related terms.

Source Authority

Source authority is how much an AI or search system trusts a particular website as a reliable source on a topic. Full definition and related terms.

Structured Data

Structured data is standardized code that labels the meaning of content on a page so machines can read it reliably. Full definition and related terms.

Topical Authority

Topical authority is the depth and breadth of trusted coverage a site has on a subject. Full definition and related terms.

Vector Database

A vector database stores embeddings and retrieves the most similar ones quickly, powering semantic search and retrieval for AI. Full definition and related terms.

Visibility Score

A visibility score is a composite metric summarizing how present a brand is across tracked prompts and AI platforms. Full definition and related terms.

Zero-Click Search

Zero-click search is when a user gets their answer without clicking through to a website. Full definition and related terms.