↗Glossary
SEO and AI search glossary — in plain English.
26 terms you’ll meet when working on search and AI visibility. Each has a one-line definition, a fuller explanation, a practical example and why it matters.
A
- AI Citations
- Links to sources shown alongside an AI-generated answer, crediting the pages the answer drew on.
- AI Mode
- Google's conversational search experience, where an AI-generated answer with links replaces the list of results and users can ask follow-up questions.
- AI Search
- Search experiences where an AI system reads sources and writes an answer, instead of only returning a list of links.
- AI Search Visibility
- How findable, citable and accurately described your brand is in AI-generated answers as well as traditional search results.
- Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
- Structuring content so search features and AI assistants can find a direct answer on your page, extract it accurately and credit you.
B
- Brand Citations
- Listings or references that state your business details — typically name, address and phone — on directories, maps and data sources.
- Brand Entity
- Your brand as search engines and AI systems understand it: a distinct thing connected to facts like its category, products, people and location.
- Brand Mentions
- References to your brand on websites you don't own — whether or not they include a link to your site.
C
- Citation Share
- The proportion of sources cited in sampled AI answers that are your own pages.
D
- Digital PR
- Earning online coverage, mentions and links from publications by offering journalists something genuinely newsworthy — data, expertise or a useful resource.
E
- Entity SEO
- Helping search engines and AI systems recognise your brand, people and products as distinct things with clear, consistent facts.
G
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
- Improving how AI systems that write answers mention, cite and describe your brand — through clear entities, original information and credible third-party references.
- Google AI Overviews
- AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of some Google search results, with links to supporting web pages.
I
- Information Retrieval
- The science of finding the most relevant documents for a query from a large collection — the foundation of both search engines and AI search.
K
- Knowledge Graph
- A database of entities and the relationships between them that search engines use to understand facts about people, places, organisations and things.
L
- Large Language Models (LLMs)
- AI models trained on very large amounts of text to understand and generate language — the technology behind ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot.
N
- NAP Consistency
- Keeping your business Name, Address and Phone number identical everywhere they appear online.
R
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
- An AI technique where the system first retrieves relevant documents, then generates an answer based on them.
S
- Schema Markup
- Structured data written using the Schema.org vocabulary — the most common way to describe page content for search engines.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Making a website easy for search engines to crawl, understand and trust, so its pages appear for the searches that matter to the business.
- Search Intent
- The goal behind a search — what the person actually wants to learn, compare, find or do.
- Semantic Search
- Search that matches the meaning of a query, not just its exact words.
- Share of Voice
- Your brand's share of visibility in a market compared with competitors — in AI search, the share of sampled answers that mention or recommend you.
- Structured Data
- Code added to a web page that labels its content in a standard format, so machines can understand exactly what the page describes.
T
- Topical Authority
- Being a dependable, in-depth source on a subject — shown by thorough, accurate coverage and recognition from others.
Z
- Zero-Click Search
- A search where the person gets their answer on the results page or in an AI answer, without clicking through to any website.
AI Visibility Audit
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Our AI Visibility Audit shows how you appear across Google and AI answer engines today — and what to fix first.
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