AI citation
A link or named reference to a source inside an AI-generated answer.
Full definitionGlossary
SEO and AI search glossary
The terms behind search, from crawling and Core Web Vitals to AI Overviews and AEO, defined plainly. Each definition is written to be accurate first and short second.
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A
AI Overviews
AI-generated summaries that Google shows above some search results, with links to the sources they draw on.
Full definitionAI SEO
A broad term for search optimization that accounts for AI-generated answers as well as traditional results. It is often used interchangeably with AEO and GEO.
Full definitionAI share of voice
The share of AI answers, across a defined set of questions, that mention a brand compared with its competitors.
Full definitionAI visibility
How often, how prominently and how accurately a brand appears in answers from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews.
Full definitionAnswer engine optimization (AEO)
The practice of making a brand easy for AI assistants to understand, verify and cite, so it is named and described accurately in AI-generated answers.
Full definitionB
Backlinks
Links from other websites to yours. Search engines use them to discover pages and judge authority; quality and relevance count far more than volume.
Full definitionC
Core Web Vitals
Google's three measures of real-world page experience: how quickly the main content loads, how quickly the page responds, and how stable it stays.
Full definitionCrawling and indexing
Crawling is how search engines discover and fetch pages; indexing is how they store them so they can appear in results. A page that is not indexed cannot rank.
Full definitionE
E-E-A-T
Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust: the qualities Google's quality guidelines use to assess content and its creators.
Full definitionEntity
A distinct, identifiable thing, such as a person, organization, place or product, that search engines and AI systems organize information around.
Full definitionEntity SEO
Making it unambiguous which entity a brand is, and what it is connected to, across a site, its structured data and third-party sources.
Full definitionG
Generative engine optimization (GEO)
Improving how often and how accurately a brand is cited in answers produced by generative AI systems. The term was introduced in a 2023 academic paper.
Full definitionGoogle AI Mode
A conversational search mode in Google that answers complex questions with an AI-generated response and supporting links.
Full definitionGoogle Business Profile
Google's free business listing, which appears in Maps and the local pack.
Full definitionGoogle Search Console
Google's free tool showing how a site performs in Google Search: the queries it appears for, clicks, indexing status and technical issues.
Full definitionK
Knowledge Graph
Google's database of entities and the relationships between them.
Full definitionKnowledge panel
The information box Google shows for a well-documented entity, drawn from its Knowledge Graph.
Full definitionL
Large language model (LLM)
An AI system trained on very large amounts of text to understand and generate language. It powers assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.
Full definitionLLM optimization (LLM SEO)
Work aimed at how large language models describe and recommend a brand, both in training data and in live retrieval.
Full definitionllms.txt
A proposed plain-text file at a site's root that gives AI systems a concise, curated guide to the site's most important content.
Full definitionLocal pack
The map and short list of businesses Google shows for searches with local intent, usually three listings drawn from Google Business Profiles.
Full definitionN
NAP consistency
Keeping a business's name, address and phone number identical everywhere it appears online.
Full definitionO
Online reputation management (ORM)
Shaping what people find when they search a name or brand, by building strong accurate results, earning coverage and reviews, and correcting errors.
Full definitionP
Prompt sampling
Running a fixed set of realistic questions across AI assistants at regular intervals to measure how a brand appears.
Full definitionR
Retrieval (RAG)
When an AI assistant searches for and reads current sources before answering, rather than relying only on what it learned in training.
Full definitionS
Search intent
The purpose behind a search: what the person wants to know, find or do. Pages rank best when they match it.
Full definitionStructured data (schema markup)
Code, usually JSON-LD using the schema.org vocabulary, that states facts about a page in machine-readable form.
Full definitionT
Technical SEO
The work of making a website easy for search engines and AI systems to crawl, render, index and understand.
Full definitionTraining data cutoff
The date after which a language model has no built-in knowledge. Later information reaches it only through retrieval.
Full definitionW
Website migration
Any significant change to a site’s URLs, platform, domain, structure or design that can affect how search engines crawl, index and rank it.
Full definitionZ
Zero-click search
A search that ends without a click to any website, because the answer appears on the results page itself.
Full definitionSearch fundamentals
AI search and answer engines
Optimization disciplines
Entities and structured data
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