The terms behind GEO and AI search.
Short, direct definitions for the acronyms and concepts that come up in GEO, AEO, and AI search work, from generative engine optimization to llms.txt.
Agent Readiness
Agent readiness is whether an AI agent can access, understand, and safely use the public information on a website to complete a task.
Read the definition →AI Citation
An AI citation is a visible link or source reference an AI answer attaches to a claim, giving the reader a path to the page that supported the answer.
Read the definition →AI Crawler
An AI crawler is an automated program that visits public web pages for purposes such as search retrieval, model training, safety review, or data collection.
Read the definition →AI Search Visibility
AI search visibility is how often and how accurately a brand appears in AI-generated answers, including mentions, citations, and recommendations.
Read the definition →Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) AEO
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring content to win the single concise answer inside a search feature, voice assistant, or answer engine like Perplexity, rather than a ranked list of results.
Read the definition →Entity SEO
Entity SEO is the practice of making the people, businesses, products, and topics on a website unambiguous to search engines and AI systems.
Read the definition →Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) GEO
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of structuring content and technical signals so AI systems like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity cite and recommend a brand inside their generated answers.
Read the definition →Google AI Mode AI Mode
Google AI Mode is Google's conversational search experience for complex questions, comparisons, and follow-up research, with links to supporting websites.
Read the definition →Google AI Overviews AI Overviews
Google AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear above traditional search results, synthesizing an answer from multiple sources and citing the pages it draws from.
Read the definition →Grounding
Grounding is the practice of tying an AI response to supplied or retrieved sources so its claims can be checked against real evidence.
Read the definition →Large Language Model Optimization (LLMO) LLMO
Large Language Model Optimization (LLMO) is the practice of structuring content for how large language models retrieve, summarize, and cite information, using the same fundamentals as GEO with more emphasis on retrieval mechanics.
Read the definition →llms.txt llms.txt
llms.txt is a proposed standard that gives AI systems a curated, markdown-formatted index of a website's most important content, published at the domain root the way robots.txt is.
Read the definition →Query Fan-Out
Query fan-out is an AI-search technique that breaks one complex question into several related searches, then combines those results into a single response.
Read the definition →Retrieval-Augmented Generation RAG
Retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, is a system pattern where an AI model retrieves relevant source material before generating an answer.
Read the definition →Schema Markup
Schema markup is structured data added to a web page to describe its visible content in a machine-readable format, usually through JSON-LD.
Read the definition →Zero-Click Search
Zero-click search happens when a person gets enough information from a results page or AI answer that they do not need to visit a website.
Read the definition →Need help turning these terms into results?
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