GEO Glossary

Clear, citable definitions of the key Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and AI-search terms — what they mean and why they matter for getting cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews.

• Generative Engine OptimizationGEOGenerative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of optimizing a brand and its content to be cited inside AI-generated answers.
• Citability ScoreA 0-100 measure of how likely a piece of content is to be cited by AI engines, broken into entity, statistic, source, extractability and FAQ dimensions.
• llms.txtllms.txt is a proposed plain-text file at a site's root that gives AI crawlers a curated, machine-readable summary of the site's key content.
• Google AI OverviewsGoogle AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries shown at the top of Google results that answer a query directly and cite supporting sources.
• Entity ClarityEntity Clarity is how unambiguously an AI system can identify a brand, product, or concept as a distinct, well-defined entity.
• Chunk ExtractabilityChunk Extractability is how easily a self-contained passage can be lifted from a page and reused as a standalone answer by an AI engine.
• Schema Markup for AISchema markup is structured data (JSON-LD) that labels page content so search and AI engines can interpret entities, facts, and relationships.
• Answer Engine OptimizationAEOAnswer Engine Optimization (AEO) is optimizing content to be the direct answer returned by answer engines and AI assistants.
• AI CitationAn AI citation is a reference to a brand, source, or page inside an AI-generated answer, often with an attributed link.
• Retrieval-Augmented GenerationRAGRAG is a technique where an AI model retrieves external documents at query time and grounds its answer in them, rather than relying only on training data.
• AI CrawlersAI crawlers are bots such as GPTBot and PerplexityBot that fetch web content for AI training and retrieval; allowing them is a prerequisite to being cited.
• AI Share of VoiceAI Share of Voice is the proportion of AI answers in a topic where your brand is cited, relative to competitors.