Glossary

GEO & AI search, term by term

Plain-English definitions of every concept behind AI search visibility — from Share of Model to grounding.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

The practice of optimizing a brand's online presence so AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity cite and recommend it in their answers.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

A near-synonym of GEO focused on structuring content so engines can extract it as a direct answer; often used for featured snippets and AI Overviews.

Share of Model (SoM)

The percentage of AI-generated answers for a set of target queries in which a brand is mentioned or cited — GEO's core visibility metric.

AI Overviews

Google's AI-generated answer boxes that appear above traditional results, synthesizing an answer from multiple cited sources.

Entity

A distinct thing (a business, person, place or product) that AI systems and search engines recognize and store attributes about. GEO strengthens what engines know and trust about your entity.

Entity Authority

The depth, consistency and corroboration of information about an entity across the web — a primary driver of whether AI engines recommend it.

Citation

A mention or reference of a brand on a third-party source (directory, publication, review platform) that AI engines use as evidence of legitimacy and relevance.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

An AI architecture where the model searches live sources and writes its answer from the retrieved pages — how Perplexity and AI search modes work. Winning retrieval means winning citations.

Knowledge Cutoff

The date after which a model has no training data. Engines bridge it with live retrieval — which is why fresh, structured content gets cited.

Structured Data / Schema Markup

Machine-readable code (JSON-LD) added to webpages that tells engines exactly what a page is — an Organization, Service, FAQ or Article — making content easier to trust and cite.

Topical Coverage

How completely a site covers its subject area. Engines treat deep, consistent coverage as expertise and cite those domains more.

Prompt-Space Visibility

Which phrasings of customer questions a brand appears for. Two prompts with the same intent can produce different recommendations, so GEO tracks visibility across prompt variations.

LLM (Large Language Model)

The AI model class behind ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude — trained on web text, which is why your public footprint shapes what it says about you.

Grounding

Connecting a model's answer to verifiable retrieved sources. Grounded engines (Perplexity, AI Overviews) cite; ungrounded answers come from training memory.

E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness — Google's quality framework, increasingly mirrored by AI engines when deciding which sources to rely on.

AI Visibility Audit

A structured assessment of how AI engines currently see a brand: which queries it appears for, who outranks it, and which sources drive competitors' citations.

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