Reference
AI visibility glossary.
Plain-English definitions for every term you'll encounter in AI visibility, GEO, and AI engine optimization.
- GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
- The practice of optimizing content and business information so that AI-powered answer engines include, cite, and recommend you in their responses. GEO focuses on entity clarity, structured data, authoritative citations, and answer-ready content. Not keyword density or backlink count.
- A restaurant adding FAQPage schema markup to its website is performing GEO, making it easier for ChatGPT to cite it in response to 'best Italian restaurant in Leeds.'
- AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
- An earlier term for the same discipline as GEO, emphasizing that the target platform is an 'answer engine' rather than a 'search engine.' Some practitioners use AEO and GEO interchangeably; GEO has become the more common term as language models took over the category.
- Structuring an FAQ page to directly answer 'who is the best plumber in Bristol?' is classic AEO.
- LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization)
- Optimizing for visibility within large language models specifically, as opposed to the broader category of AI engines (which includes retrieval-augmented systems). LLMO typically focuses on ensuring your entity is well-represented in sources that LLMs train on or retrieve from.
- Getting your business cited on high-authority pages that LLMs are likely to have indexed is an LLMO strategy.
- AI Overviews
- Google's feature that surfaces an AI-generated summary at the top of certain search results pages, synthesizing information from multiple web sources. AI Overviews represent a distinct optimization target from conversational AI engines like ChatGPT. They pull from Google's index and prioritize different signals.
- When a user searches 'best accountant in Manchester,' Google AI Overviews may cite three firms by name before any organic results appear.
- Citation vs Mention
- A citation is when an AI engine names your business as a direct recommendation or source. It carries positive recommendation weight. A mention is any reference to your business, including neutral or negative ones. Clartiv tracks both, but citations count more toward your AI Visibility Score.
- ChatGPT saying 'I recommend Acme Plumbing for emergency repairs' is a citation. Saying 'some users have had mixed results with Acme Plumbing' is a mention.
- Query Fan-out
- The technique of generating multiple semantically varied queries from a single intent, to measure AI visibility across the full range of ways a customer might ask for a business like yours. Clartiv generates 12 to 24 fan-out queries per business to avoid measuring a single phrasing that may over- or under-represent real visibility.
- For a Manchester accountant, fan-out queries include 'best accountant Manchester,' 'accountant near me Manchester,' 'who should I use for tax returns in Manchester,' and 'compare accountants in Manchester.'
- Structured Data / Schema Markup
- Machine-readable annotations added to web pages (usually as JSON-LD) that describe entities (businesses, products, FAQs, articles) in a format AI engines and search engines can parse directly. Schema.org is the vocabulary standard. Well-implemented structured data is one of the highest-leverage GEO actions.
- Adding LocalBusiness schema to your homepage with your name, address, phone number, and category is foundational structured data for GEO.
- RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
- An architecture where a language model retrieves relevant documents from an external store at query time, then generates its response based on those documents. Many AI engines (including Perplexity and Bing Copilot) use RAG. Appearing in the retrieved documents is the key optimization target for RAG-powered engines.
- When Perplexity answers 'best accountant in Bristol,' it retrieves current web pages and uses their content to generate its response. Being on those pages matters.
- AI Visibility Score
- Clartiv's composite 0 to 100 metric measuring how well a business is recommended across AI engines. It combines three signals: Visibility Rate (45%), Position Score (35%), and Sentiment Score (20%) across four engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. See the full formula on the Methodology page.
- A score of 72 means your business is recommended in the majority of relevant AI queries, typically in the top two positions, with generally positive framing.