AI SEO terms, explained in plain English
Plain-English definitions of AI SEO terms, with the technical depth one click away.
- What Is AI SEO?
AI SEO is the work of making your business easy to find in Google and easy for AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity to quote.
- What Is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of writing and structuring pages so that AI assistants, AI Overviews and other answer boxes can lift a short, correct answer from your page and credit…
- What Is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of shaping your content, and what the web says about you, so AI search tools cite or name you in the answers they write.
- What Is LLM Optimization (LLMO)?
LLM optimization (LLMO) is the work of shaping what large language models such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini know and say about your business.
- What Is Query Fan-Out in AI Search?
Query fan-out is when an AI search tool splits one question into several smaller web searches, runs them, and combines the results into one answer.
- What Is llms.txt?
llms.txt is a proposed plain Markdown file, placed at yoursite.com/llms.txt, that lists your most useful pages for AI tools to read.
- What Is E-E-A-T and Why Does It Matter for AI Search?
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust.
- What Are Google AI Overviews?
Google AI Overviews are AI-written summaries shown above regular search results, with links to supporting pages.
- What Is Google AI Mode?
Google AI Mode is a conversational search mode where Google writes an AI answer, lets you ask follow-up questions and links to the web.
- What Is ChatGPT Search?
ChatGPT search is ChatGPT answering with live web results and links to the pages it used.
- What Is Perplexity and How Does It Pick Sources?
Perplexity is an AI answer engine that searches the web as you ask and shows numbered citations.
- What Is Entity SEO?
Entity SEO is making it clear to search systems who or what you are, so they do not confuse you with something else.
- What Is Topical Authority?
Topical authority is how completely and credibly a website covers one subject.
- What Is Schema Markup, and Does It Help AI Visibility?
Schema markup is extra code that labels the facts on a page, such as who wrote it, what the product costs, or which business it describes.
- What Are Brand Mentions and Why Do AI Engines Weigh Them?
A brand mention is any place on the web that names your business, with or without a link.
- What Is RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)?
Retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, is a method where an AI looks up relevant documents first and then writes its answer using them.
- What Is a Knowledge Graph?
A knowledge graph is a database of real-world things, called entities, and the relationships between them.
- What Are Vector Embeddings and Semantic Search?
A vector embedding is a list of numbers that represents the meaning of a piece of text.
- What Is Zero-Click Search?
A zero-click search is a search where the person gets the answer on the results page and never clicks through to a website.
- What Is an AI Citation, and How Do You Get One?
An AI citation is a link that an AI answer shows as a source for what it says, such as a footnote in ChatGPT or a supporting link in Google AI Overviews.
- What Is AI Share of Voice and How Is It Measured?
AI share of voice is the portion of brand mentions in AI answers that go to you, compared with named competitors, across a fixed list of prompts.
- What Is an AI Visibility Score?
An AI visibility score is a number that tells you how often AI assistants show your brand when people ask questions in your market.
- What Is Prompt Tracking for AI Search?
Prompt tracking is running the same fixed list of buyer questions through AI assistants on a regular schedule and recording which brands are named or cited.
- What Is BLUF Writing, and Does It Help in AI Search?
BLUF stands for Bottom Line Up Front: you open a page, section or message with the answer, then give the detail.
- What Is Atomic Content?
Atomic content is writing built from small, self-contained pieces.
- What Are Hallucinated URLs?
A hallucinated URL is a web address an AI assistant gives that looks right but leads to a missing page.
- What Are AI Crawlers? GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot and More
AI crawlers are automated programs that fetch web pages for AI companies.
- What Is AI Referral Traffic?
AI referral traffic is the set of website visits that start when someone clicks a link inside an AI assistant such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity.
- What Is Programmatic SEO?
Programmatic SEO is building many search pages from one template and a data set, one page per row.
- What Is Conversational Search?
Conversational search is finding information by asking in full sentences and then following up, as you would with a person.
- What Is Passage Ranking and Chunking?
Passage ranking and chunking mean that search systems judge parts of a page, not only the whole page.
- What Are Featured Snippets?
A featured snippet is a box at the top of a Google results page that shows an answer pulled from a web page, with a link to it.
- What Is YMYL Content?
YMYL stands for Your Money or Your Life. It covers topics where inaccurate content could significantly harm a person's health, financial stability or safety, or the well-being of society.
- What Is Google's Helpful Content System?
The helpful content system was a Google ranking system, announced in 2022, that rewarded content made for people over content made to attract search visits.
- What Is Scaled Content Abuse?
Scaled content abuse is a Google spam policy.
- What Are Consensus Signals in AI Search?
Consensus signals are the agreement between independent sources about a fact or a brand.
- What Is Search Everywhere Optimization?
Search everywhere optimization is the practice of making your business easy to find and recommend wherever buyers look: Google, YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, TikTok and AI assistants such as ChatGPT.
- What Is an Answer Block and How Do You Write One?
An answer block is a short, self-contained reply of roughly 40 to 60 words that sits directly under a question heading or at the top of a page.
- What Is Agentic Search and Agentic Commerce?
Agentic search is AI that does the research itself: it runs many searches, opens pages, compares options and returns a recommendation.
- What Are AI Search Engines and Which Ones Matter?
AI search engines answer a question with a written summary and cite the web pages behind it, instead of listing ten links.
- What Is an AI SEO Audit and What Does It Include?
An AI SEO audit is a structured check of whether AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity can reach, understand and cite your website.
- What Does an AI SEO Agency Actually Do?
An AI SEO agency helps your business get found and cited in AI answers as well as Google.