SEO, GEO and AEO glossary

GEO is the practice of making a brand and its content more likely to be mentioned and cited in answers produced by generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews.

Unlike classic ranking, a generative answer is composed from several sources, so GEO works on being a clear, consistent, verifiable source: unambiguous entity information, well-structured pages, third-party corroboration and content that directly answers buyer questions. Results are observed by asking the platforms real questions and recording mentions and citations, which vary by wording, time and location.

Related:Answer engineAI citationBrand mentionEntityShare of voicellms.txtGEO serviceFree tool: AI Visibility

AEO is the practice of structuring content so that an answer engine — a featured snippet, voice assistant, AI Overview or chatbot — can lift a clear, self-contained answer from it.

Typical AEO work includes leading each page with a direct answer, using question-shaped headings, keeping one idea per section, adding FAQ and other structured data, and showing authorship and update dates. AEO overlaps with GEO but focuses on the page-level format of the answer rather than on brand-level visibility across sources.

Related:Answer engineSERP featureStructured dataAI OverviewsSearch intentAEO serviceFree tool: AEO Readiness

An AI citation is a link or named source that a generative answer attaches to a statement, showing where the information came from.

Citations are the closest equivalent to a ranking in generative search: they send referral traffic and signal that the platform treated the page as trustworthy for that claim. Citations are observed per platform and per question and should be reported as samples, not as fixed rankings.

Related:Brand mentionGEOShare of voiceE-E-A-T

AI Mode is a conversational search experience in Google where the whole results page is an AI-generated response that the user can refine with follow-up questions.

It breaks a query into sub-questions, searches for each and composes one answer with source links. Visibility in AI Mode depends on being retrievable and quotable for those sub-questions, which rewards pages that answer specific questions precisely.

Related:AI OverviewsAnswer engineGEOSearch intent

AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that Google shows at the top of some search results pages, with links to the sources the summary draws on.

They appear for a subset of queries and can change which organic results receive clicks. A page can be cited in an AI Overview without ranking first in the classic results, which is why clear, well-structured answers and verifiable facts matter alongside traditional ranking signals.

Related:AI ModeSERP featureAnswer engineAI citation

An answer engine is a system that responds to a question with a composed answer rather than a list of links — for example AI chat assistants, voice assistants and AI-generated summaries on search results pages.

Answer engines retrieve candidate sources, extract or generate an answer and may attach citations. Because the user often does not click through, visibility is measured by whether a brand is named or cited inside the answer, not only by the position of a link.

Related:AEOGEOAI OverviewsAI ModeAI citation

A brand mention is any occurrence of a company, product or person's name in content — including in an AI answer — whether or not it carries a link.

In generative search a brand can be mentioned without being cited (named but not linked) or cited without being mentioned (linked as a source for a general statement). Both are tracked separately because they indicate different things: recognition of the entity versus trust in a specific page.

Related:AI citationEntityGEOShare of voice

A canonical URL is the preferred address of a page when the same or very similar content is reachable at more than one URL, declared with a rel="canonical" link.

Canonicals consolidate duplicate variants (tracking parameters, http/https, trailing slashes) so that signals accrue to one URL. Search engines treat the declaration as a strong hint, not a command, and may choose a different canonical if signals disagree.

Related:IndexationCrawlabilitySEO

Core Web Vitals are Google's user-experience metrics for loading (Largest Contentful Paint), interactivity (Interaction to Next Paint) and visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift).

They are measured from real visitors' browsers and reported in Search Console. Passing thresholds is a modest ranking signal and a direct usability improvement; failing them rarely explains large ranking differences on its own.

Related:SEOCrawlability

Crawlability is how easily a search engine or AI crawler can discover and fetch the pages of a website.

It depends on robots.txt rules, internal links, sitemaps, response codes, redirects, server speed and whether content is rendered in HTML or only after JavaScript runs. A page that cannot be crawled cannot be indexed, ranked or cited.

Related:IndexationSEOllms.txtCanonical URL

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness — the qualities Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines use to describe helpful, reliable content.

E-E-A-T is not a single ranking factor but a framework for the signals that systems try to reward: first-hand experience, demonstrated expertise, recognition by others and accuracy. On a website it shows up as clear authorship, cited sources, dated updates, honest claims and consistent business information.

Related:EntityAI citationTopical authorityStructured data

An entity is a uniquely identifiable thing — an organisation, person, product, place or concept — that search engines and AI systems recognise independently of the exact words used to describe it.

Search engines build knowledge graphs of entities and their relationships. Consistent names, descriptions, addresses and identifiers across a website, directories and third-party sources help a brand be understood as one clear entity, which supports both rankings and AI mentions.

Related:Brand mentionStructured dataE-E-A-TGEO

Indexation is the process by which a search engine stores a crawled page in its index so that it can appear in results.

A page can be crawled but not indexed — because of a noindex directive, a canonical pointing elsewhere, thin or duplicate content, or quality thresholds. Google Search Console's Pages report shows which URLs are indexed and why others are not.

Related:CrawlabilityCanonical URLSEO

llms.txt is a proposed plain-text file at the root of a website that gives large language models a concise, curated overview of the site and links to its most useful pages.

It complements robots.txt (which says what may be crawled) and sitemap.xml (which lists URLs) by explaining what the site is and where the authoritative content lives. Support varies between AI providers; it is a low-cost, non-standard courtesy rather than a guaranteed signal.

Related:CrawlabilityGEOAnswer engine

Search intent is the goal behind a query — to learn something, to find a specific site, to compare options or to buy — and determines what kind of page can satisfy it.

Pages that match intent (a guide for informational queries, a comparison for commercial ones, a product or service page for transactional ones) tend to rank and convert better. Intent can be read from the results a search engine already shows for the query.

Related:SEOAEOTopical authority

SEO is the practice of improving a website so that search engines can crawl, index and rank its pages for the queries its audience uses.

It spans technical health (crawlability, indexation, speed), content that matches search intent, and off-site signals such as links and brand mentions. Progress is measured with observed data — impressions, clicks and positions in Google Search Console — rather than estimates. SEO is a continuous discipline, not a one-time fix, because search engines and competitors keep changing.

Related:CrawlabilityIndexationSearch intentCore Web VitalsTopical authority

A SERP feature is any element on a search engine results page other than the classic blue-link results — such as featured snippets, People Also Ask, local packs, sitelinks, video carousels, ads and AI Overviews.

SERP features change how much attention and how many clicks the organic results receive. Tracking which features appear for a keyword explains traffic changes that rankings alone cannot.

Related:AI OverviewsAEOSearch intent

AI share of voice is the proportion of sampled AI answers, for a defined set of questions, in which a brand is mentioned or cited compared with its competitors.

It is measured by asking the same prompt set across platforms at intervals and recording mentions and citations. Because answers vary with wording, time and location, it is reported as a sampled trend with its method stated, never as an exact market figure.

Related:GEOBrand mentionAI citation

Structured data is machine-readable markup — usually JSON-LD using the schema.org vocabulary — that describes what a page is about: an organisation, a service, an article, a FAQ, a product.

It helps search engines and AI systems interpret content unambiguously and can enable rich results. Structured data must describe what is visibly on the page; marking up ratings, prices or dates that are not present is against search engine guidelines.

Related:EntityAEOSERP featureE-E-A-T

Topical authority is the degree to which a website is recognised as a thorough, reliable source on a subject, built by covering that subject in depth and consistently.

It is demonstrated through interlinked clusters of content that answer the full range of questions in a topic, supported by references from other sites. Authority on a topic makes individual pages easier to rank and more likely to be chosen as sources by AI systems.

Related:E-E-A-TSearch intentSEOAI citation