The AEO & SEO glossary, in plain English.

An AI hallucination is when an AI engine produces a confident answer that is factually wrong. For businesses, hallucinations can mean inaccurate descriptions, wrong pricing, or invented features showing up in AI search results.

AI Engines

AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of Google search results for many queries. They synthesize information from multiple sources into a direct answer, with citation links to the websites Google pulled from.

AI Engines

Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring your website, content, and brand signals so that AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews cite your business by name when they answer user questions.

AEO & GEO

A backlink is a hyperlink from another website pointing to yours. Backlinks are one of Google's strongest ranking signals and remain one of the strongest predictors of which sources AI engines trust enough to cite.

Content & Authority

A brand mention is any reference to your business name on the web, with or without a hyperlink. Linked mentions are backlinks. Unlinked mentions still matter because they feed Google's understanding of your entity and train AI engines to associate your brand with relevant topics.

Content & Authority

A canonical URL is the version of a webpage that you tell search engines to treat as the original. Setting a canonical prevents duplicate content issues when the same page is reachable through multiple URLs.

Technical SEO

ChatGPT Search is OpenAI's feature that lets ChatGPT pull live web results into its answers. It launched in late 2024 and is now the default for current or local questions, making ChatGPT a real competitor to Google for search.

AI Engines

Citation share is the percentage of relevant AI prompts in which your business is cited by name. It is the AEO equivalent of share of voice in traditional marketing, and the leading indicator of whether your AI optimization work is paying off.

Measurement

Claude is Anthropic's family of large language models, used both as a consumer chat assistant and as the AI behind many enterprise tools including Notion AI, Slack AI, and developer products. Claude is known for long context, careful reasoning, and strong citation behaviour.

AI Engines

Core Web Vitals are three Google metrics that measure real-world page experience: Largest Contentful Paint (loading speed), Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness), and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability). They are a confirmed Google ranking signal.

Technical SEO

Domain Authority is a score from 1 to 100, calculated by tools like Moz and Ahrefs (where it is called Domain Rating), that estimates how strong a website is in search. It is not a Google metric, but it correlates with ranking ability.

Content & Authority

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It is the framework Google uses to evaluate the quality of websites and content, especially for topics that affect health, finances, or safety. Strong E-E-A-T signals also influence which sources AI engines trust enough to cite.

Content & Authority

Entity SEO is the practice of optimizing for the entities (people, places, brands, concepts) associated with your business rather than just keywords. It is how you get search engines and AI engines to recognize what your business is, not just what words it uses.

Content & Authority

A featured snippet is a boxed answer that Google displays at the top of search results for some queries, pulled directly from a ranking webpage. Featured snippets predate AI Overviews and are still common, especially for definitions, lists, and step-by-step queries.

Technical SEO

Generative Engine Optimization is the same practice as Answer Engine Optimization: structuring content and signals so generative AI engines cite your business in their answers. The two terms are used interchangeably.

AEO & GEO

Google Business Profile is the free Google tool that lets a business manage how it appears in Google Search and Maps. A complete, well-maintained Profile is the single highest-leverage signal for local SEO and AI engine visibility for service businesses.

Local SEO

Google Gemini is the family of large language models that powers Google's AI products, including Google AI Overviews, the Gemini chat app, and AI features inside Workspace. It is the LLM most directly tied to traditional Google search rankings.

AI Engines

Grounding is the technique of tying an AI model's answer back to a specific, verifiable source. A grounded answer cites where each claim came from. An ungrounded answer is the AI improvising.

AI Engines

Internal linking is the practice of connecting pages within your own website using hyperlinks. Smart internal linking distributes ranking signals, helps search engines understand site structure, and boosts topical authority.

Technical SEO

Google's Knowledge Graph is a database of entities - people, businesses, places, and things - and the relationships between them. When Google shows a knowledge panel on the right of search results, it is pulling from the Knowledge Graph.

Schema & Data

A Large Language Model (LLM) is an AI system trained on huge volumes of text to predict and generate human-like language. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity are all built on top of LLMs.

AI Engines

llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website that tells AI engines which pages and content matter most. It is to LLMs what robots.txt is to search engine crawlers.

AEO & GEO

The local pack is the boxed group of three businesses Google shows for local-intent searches, alongside a map of their locations. Ranking in the local pack drives more clicks for many small businesses than ranking #1 in the organic results below it.

Local SEO

A meta description is a short HTML snippet that summarizes a webpage's content. Search engines often display it underneath the page title in search results. It does not directly affect rankings but it strongly affects click-through rates.

Technical SEO

NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone. NAP consistency is the practice of using the exact same business name, address, and phone number across every listing on the web. Inconsistent NAP confuses search engines and AI engines about which business is which.

Local SEO

Perplexity is an AI search engine that returns direct, source-cited answers to user queries. It was built around grounding from day one, which makes it the cleanest AI engine for measuring citation share.

AI Engines

Prompt engineering is the skill of writing inputs to AI models in a way that produces accurate, useful outputs. It matters for SEO because the prompts you test against AI engines determine what you can measure and improve.

AI Engines

Retrieval Augmented Generation is the technique AI search engines use to combine a language model's general knowledge with fresh information pulled from the live web. It is why ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini can cite current sources rather than relying on training data alone.

AI Engines

Rich results are search results that include extra visual elements pulled from schema markup, such as star ratings, price ranges, FAQ accordions, recipe times, or event dates. They take up more space on the SERP and earn a higher click-through rate than plain blue-link results.

Schema & Data

Schema markup is structured code added to a webpage that tells search engines and AI engines exactly what each piece of content represents. Proper schema turns ambiguous text into machine-readable facts about your business, products, and reviews.

Schema & Data

Semantic search is the technique of matching queries to results based on meaning rather than exact keyword matching. It is how Google understands that 'cheap web design' and 'affordable website builder' are looking for similar things.

Content & Authority

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. It is the page a search engine returns after a user submits a query, including organic listings, paid ads, AI Overviews, featured snippets, knowledge panels, and any other on-page features.

Technical SEO

Share of voice is the percentage of total marketing visibility in your category that belongs to your brand. In SEO it usually means share of search traffic for category keywords. In AEO it shifts to share of AI citations.

Measurement

A sitemap is a file (usually XML) that lists the important URLs on your website along with metadata about each one. It helps search engines and AI crawlers discover and prioritize your content.

Technical SEO

Structured data is information organized in a predictable, machine-readable format. On the web, structured data usually means schema.org markup added to a page so search engines and AI engines can extract facts cleanly.

Schema & Data

Topical authority is the depth and breadth of your coverage on a specific subject. A site with strong topical authority covers a topic from every angle and is recognized by search engines and AI engines as a primary source on that topic.

Content & Authority

A zero-click search is a query where the user gets the answer they need directly from the search results page without clicking any link. Featured snippets, AI Overviews, and knowledge panels all generate zero-click outcomes.

Measurement