Glossary
The AI search glossary
The terms you will meet when you start working on AI search, each defined in a sentence.
- Answer engine optimization (AEO)
- The work of getting your company named when someone puts a question to an AI assistant or answer engine.
- It starts from the questions buyers ask, then changes the pages those answers can draw on. Learn more
- Generative engine optimization (GEO)
- The work of shaping the sources a generative AI engine draws on when it writes an answer.
- In practice the term overlaps heavily with AEO, and many agencies use the two interchangeably. Learn more
- AI visibility
- How often AI engines name and cite your company when people ask questions you can answer.
- Answers vary between runs, so it should be measured across repeated runs and across engines. Learn more
- AI citation
- A link to a source inside an AI-generated answer.
- A citation differs from a mention: your page can be cited without your brand being named, and your brand can be named without a link.
- llms.txt
- A proposed plain text file at the root of a website that summarizes the site for AI tools.
- It is a community proposal rather than an agreed standard, so treat it as low-cost groundwork, not a ranking lever. Learn more
- IndexNow
- A protocol that lets a website tell participating search engines that a page has been added or changed.
- Fame Search sends a ping when a page goes live. Google does not participate, so Google indexing is tracked separately.
- AI Overviews
- The AI-generated summaries Google shows at the top of some search results, with links to sources.
- They appear inside normal Google search.
- AI Mode
- Google's conversational search experience, where answers are AI-generated and people can ask follow-up questions.
- It sits alongside the standard results page.
- LLM SEO
- Search optimization aimed at the large language models behind assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.
- It is another common name for much the same work as AEO and GEO. Learn more
- Entity
- A distinct thing a search engine or AI model can recognize, such as a company, person or product.
- Consistent descriptions across your site and third-party profiles make it clearer who you are and what you do.
- Knowledge graph
- A database of entities and the relationships between them, used by search engines to understand facts.
- Google's Knowledge Graph is the best-known example.
Frequently Asked Questions
The work of getting your company named when someone puts a question to an AI assistant or answer engine.
The work of shaping the sources a generative AI engine draws on when it writes an answer.
How often AI engines name and cite your company when people ask questions you can answer.
Want to be in the answer?
Book a call with Tom and we will look at which questions your buyers are asking AI - and who is being named today.