Glossary

SEO, AEO and GEO, in plain English.

The terms behind getting found on Google and cited by AI — what each one means and why it matters to a business.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

The work of making a website rank in Google's and Bing's organic results: fast pages, clean structure, crawlable content, the keywords customers actually search, and links from trusted sites.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

Structuring content so search engines and voice assistants lift it as the direct answer — featured snippets, People Also Ask, Siri and Alexa. It rewards pages that ask a real question and answer it in the first two sentences.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

Making AI assistants — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews — name and cite a business when a user asks for a recommendation. It depends on clear entity information, structured data, consistent facts across the web, and content an AI can quote.

Google AI Overviews

The AI-written summary Google shows above the normal results for many searches. It cites a handful of source pages; being one of them is the new top spot.

llms.txt

A plain-text file at the root of a website (/llms.txt) that tells AI models what the site is, what it offers and where the key pages are — a sitemap written for language models instead of crawlers.

Schema markup (structured data)

Machine-readable labels, usually JSON-LD, that tell search engines and AI exactly what a page describes — a LocalBusiness, a Service with a price, an FAQ, a review. It is how a site states facts instead of hoping they are inferred.

Entity

A distinct, identifiable thing — a business, a person, a place — that search engines and AI models track across the web. Strong entities have the same name, address, phone and description everywhere they appear.

E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness — the qualities Google's quality guidelines use to judge whether content deserves to rank. Real authors, real credentials and real reviews are how a site shows them.

Core Web Vitals

Google's page-experience measurements: how fast the main content loads (LCP), how quickly the page responds to input (INP), and how much the layout jumps around (CLS). Slow sites rank lower and convert worse.

Featured snippet

The boxed answer at the top of a Google result page, quoted directly from one website. AEO is largely the practice of winning these.

AI citation

A link or source mention inside an AI assistant's answer. Citations are how AI search sends traffic and trust to a business; a site nobody cites is invisible in AI search.

Google Business Profile

The free listing that powers a business's presence in Google Maps and the local pack. Complete, accurate profiles with steady reviews are one of the strongest local ranking signals.

Local pack

The map and three business listings Google shows for searches with local intent, like 'plumber near me'. Most local calls come from here, not from the organic links below it.

Canonical URL

The one official address for a page, declared in its code, so search engines do not split ranking signals between duplicate versions of the same content.

robots.txt

A file at a site's root that tells crawlers — including AI crawlers like GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot — which parts of the site they may read. Blocking them by accident removes a business from AI answers.

AI crawler

A bot that reads websites for an AI company — GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot, Google-Extended. Some gather training data; others fetch pages live to answer a user's question and cite them.

Google AI Mode

Google's conversational search experience, where the whole answer is generated by AI and cites a set of sources. It rewards the same things AI Overviews do: pages that rank, answer clearly and can be trusted.

Zero-click search

A search where the answer appears right on the results page — a featured snippet, map pack or AI Overview — so the user never clicks a link. Being the answer, or the business named in it, matters more than the click.

People Also Ask

The expandable boxes of related questions in Google's results, each answered by a quote from one website. A prime AEO target: question-shaped headings with short, direct answers win them.

NAP consistency

Keeping your business Name, Address and Phone number identical everywhere they appear — your website, Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Yelp and directories. Mismatches make search engines and AI less confident you are one real business.

Backlink

A link from another website to yours. Relevant links from trusted sites — local chambers, partners, press — remain one of the strongest signals that your business is real and reputable.

Title tag

The page title shown as the blue headline in search results and in the browser tab. For a local business it should name the service and the city, in under about 60 characters.

Google Search Console

Google's free tool that shows which of your pages are indexed, which searches you appear for, and how many people click. The first place to look when a site isn't showing up.