The AI search visibility glossary.
54 terms describing how brands surface (or don't) inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Free, no signup — bookmark as reference.
A
- AI CrawlerBots operated by AI companies — GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended — that fetch web content for model training or live answer retrieval.Read
- AI OverviewsGoogle's AI-generated summaries shown above traditional results, now appearing on roughly half of searches and dramatically reducing clicks to websites.Read
- AI Search VisibilityHow often and how prominently a brand appears in answers generated by AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.Read
- Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)The practice of structuring content so that answer engines — AI assistants and featured-snippet systems — extract and present it as the direct answer.Read
B
C
- AI CitationsThe linked sources an AI assistant credits when generating an answer. Being cited is the AI-era equivalent of ranking #1.Read
- ChatGPT SearchOpenAI's web-grounded search experience inside ChatGPT — the largest single source of AI referral traffic to websites.Read
- CrawlabilityHow easily bots can access, fetch, and parse a site's content. The technical foundation of both SEO and AI visibility.Read
D
- Deep ResearchAgentic AI modes that browse dozens of sources over minutes to produce long-form reports — a growing, high-stakes surface for B2B visibility.Read
- Domain AuthorityA third-party estimate of a domain's ranking strength. In AI search, authority persists but flows through entity trust and corroboration, not just links.Read
E
F
G
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)The discipline of increasing a brand's visibility inside AI-generated answers — the successor field to SEO for the AI search era.Read
- GPTBotOpenAI's web crawler for collecting model training data. Distinct from OAI-SearchBot, which powers live ChatGPT Search retrieval.Read
- GroundingConnecting a language model's answer to retrieved real-world sources at answer time, reducing hallucination and creating the citation opportunity.Read
H
I
- IndexingThe process of storing and organizing crawled pages for retrieval. AI answers draw on search indexes — unindexed pages can't be cited.Read
- Information GainThe new, non-redundant information a page adds versus what's already published — increasingly the deciding factor in AI citation selection.Read
J
K
- Knowledge CutoffThe date after which a model's training data ends. Anything you launched after it doesn't exist in the model's memory — only retrieval can surface it.Read
- Knowledge GraphA structured database of entities and their relationships that search engines and AI systems use to resolve who's who and what's what.Read
L
- Large Language Model (LLM)The neural networks behind ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude — trained on web-scale text, now mediating how buyers discover brands.Read
- llms.txtA proposed markdown file at /llms.txt that curates a site's key content for AI systems. Widely adopted, rarely fetched — know both facts.Read
M
N
- Natural Language Processing (NLP)The field of computing that parses and generates human language — the machinery deciding what your content 'means' to search and AI systems.Read
- NoindexA directive telling search engines not to store a page in their index — which also removes it from the indexes AI retrieval depends on.Read
O
P
- PerplexityThe citation-first AI answer engine — every answer grounded in retrieved sources, making it the most transparent surface for visibility work.Read
- Prompt TrackingSystematically running defined buyer prompts against AI assistants over time to measure brand mentions, citations, and share of voice.Read
Q
R
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)The architecture where an LLM retrieves relevant documents first, then generates its answer from them — the engine of citable AI search.Read
- Rich ResultsEnhanced search listings powered by structured data — stars, FAQs, products — and a proving ground for machine-readable content.Read
- robots.txtThe file governing which bots may crawl what — now the control panel deciding your participation in AI training and AI answers.Read
S
- AI Share of VoiceYour brand's percentage of mentions across AI answers for a prompt set, versus competitors — the market-share metric of AI search.Read
- Schema MarkupStructured data vocabulary (schema.org) describing a page's meaning to machines — entity hygiene for search engines and AI pipelines.Read
- Semantic SearchSearch by meaning rather than keyword matching — powered by embeddings, it's how retrieval systems decide what's relevant to a prompt.Read
T
U
V
- AI Visibility ScoreA composite metric summarizing brand presence across AI assistants — mention rate, citation rate, position, and sentiment in one trackable number.Read
- Vector EmbeddingsNumerical representations of meaning that let machines compare texts by concept — the math underneath semantic retrieval.Read