AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
The practice of optimizing content so it is used and cited inside the direct answers given by AI answer engines. AEO and GEO are often used interchangeably.
Glossary
AI & GEO glossary
The terms you need to understand visibility in AI search — explained in plain language. From GEO and RAG to citations and zero-click.
A
AI agent
An AI system that can take actions to complete a task — browsing, calling tools or APIs, and chaining steps — rather than only producing a single text reply.
AI Mode (Google)
Google’s conversational, AI-generated search experience that answers a query directly with a synthesized response instead of a list of links.
AI Overviews
The AI-generated summary box Google shows at the top of search results, citing a few sources. Appearing in it is a core GEO goal.
AI visibility
How often and how prominently your brand appears across AI answers — the core thing GEO tools like CiteLens measure.
Answer engine
A search tool that returns a single synthesized answer rather than a list of links — for example ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews.
B
Brand mention
When an AI answer names your brand in its text. Distinct from a domain citation, which links your website as a source.
C
Chatbot / assistant
A conversational interface to a language model (such as ChatGPT or Claude) that answers questions and holds a dialogue.
Citation
A source an AI engine links or attributes a claim to when answering. Getting cited drives both authority and referral traffic.
Confidence interval (Wilson)
A statistical range showing how reliable a measured rate is given the sample size. CiteLens reports a 95% Wilson interval so you can tell real movement from noise.
Context window
The maximum amount of text (measured in tokens) a model can consider at once, including your prompt and its answer.
Crawlability
Whether automated bots — including AI crawlers — can reach and read a page. If they can’t crawl it, they can’t cite it.
D
Domain citation
When an AI answer cites your website as a source. CiteLens tracks this separately from brand mentions.
E
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust — quality signals search and AI systems use to judge whether a source is worth surfacing.
Embedding
A numeric vector that represents the meaning of text so machines can compare ideas by similarity rather than exact words. The basis of semantic search.
F
Fine-tuning
Further training a base model on additional examples so it performs better on a specific task, tone or domain.
G
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
The discipline of making a brand visible and cited inside answers from generative AI engines — the AI-era counterpart to SEO.
GPTBot / AI crawler
Bots that AI companies use to fetch web pages (e.g. GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot). Allowing them in robots.txt is a prerequisite for being cited.
Grounding
Tying a model’s answer to real, retrieved sources (such as live web results) so it is accurate and attributable rather than invented.
H
Hallucination
When a model states something false or fabricated with confidence. Grounding and citations reduce hallucinations.
K
Knowledge cutoff
The date after which a model has no built-in training knowledge. Web search or grounding is what lets it answer about newer events.
L
LLM (Large Language Model)
A model trained on vast amounts of text to predict and generate language. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are powered by LLMs.
llms.txt
A proposed file at a site’s root that gives AI models a clean, curated map of the most important content — an AI-era companion to robots.txt and sitemaps.
M
Multimodal
A model that can understand or generate more than one type of input — text, images, audio or video.
P
Prompt
The instruction or question given to an AI model. In GEO, the set of prompts you track represents the real questions your buyers ask AI.
Prompt volume
An estimate of how often real users ask a given prompt or topic of AI — the AI-era equivalent of keyword search volume.
R
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
A technique where a model retrieves relevant documents first and then writes its answer from them — how most AI search engines stay current and citable.
robots.txt
A file that tells crawlers which parts of a site they may access. To be cited by AI, you must allow the relevant AI user-agents here.
S
Semantic / vector search
Search that matches by meaning using embeddings, rather than by exact keywords — so “cheap flights” can match “budget airfare”.
Sentiment analysis
Measuring whether the language around your brand in AI answers is positive, neutral or negative.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Optimizing to rank in traditional search result links. GEO is its counterpart for visibility inside AI-generated answers.
SERP
Search Engine Results Page — the page of results a query returns. AI Overviews and answer boxes increasingly sit at the top of it.
Share of voice (AI)
Your share of all brand appearances across AI answers for your topics — how visible you are relative to competitors.
Structured data (schema.org)
Machine-readable markup that labels what content means (a product, an FAQ, an article). It helps search and AI systems understand and reuse your content.
System prompt
Hidden instructions that set a model’s role, rules and tone before it sees the user’s message.
T
Token
The small unit of text (roughly a word piece) a model reads and generates. Usage, limits and pricing are measured in tokens.
Z
Zero-click search
A search that is answered on the results page itself, so the user never clicks through. AI answers make zero-click the norm — which is why being inside the answer matters.
Be visible for these terms
CiteLens measures whether AI engines mention you for topics like these — and helps you grow your visibility.