Answer engine optimization, in plain English.
32 terms that decide whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Copilot name your brand, each with a short answer, how to measure it and how I handle it.
32 terms, 5 categories, updated Oct 18 2026
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Answer Engine Optimization
Making your pages easy for AI assistants and search engines to read, trust and quote, so your brand is named in the answer.
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AEO vs GEO vs SEO
How the three labels differ: SEO ranks pages, AEO gets you named in answers, GEO is the same aim for generative engines.
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Citations
The sources an AI answer names, links or relies on to support what it says.
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8 terms
Foundations
What AEO is, how it relates to SEO, and the ideas everything else builds on.
Answer Engine Optimization
Making your pages easy for AI assistants and search engines to read, trust and quote, so your brand is named in the answer.
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Generative Engine Optimization
Shaping content and authority so generative AI systems include and cite your brand in the answers they write.
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AEO vs GEO vs SEO
How the three labels differ: SEO ranks pages, AEO gets you named in answers, GEO is the same aim for generative engines.
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Entity
A distinct person, brand, product or concept that search and AI systems can identify and connect to facts.
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Citations
The sources an AI answer names, links or relies on to support what it says.
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Brand Mention
Any reference to your brand, linked or not, on a page an AI system might read.
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AI Overview
Google’s AI written summary at the top of some search results, with links to its sources.
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Zero Click Search
A search where the answer appears on the results page, so the user does not click through.
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7 terms
Retrieval and ranking
How AI systems find, score and pick the passages they quote.
Retrieval
How an AI system finds candidate pages and passages before it writes an answer.
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Passage Ranking
Judging individual passages of a page for relevance, not only the page as a whole.
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Vector Relevance
How close the meaning of a passage is to the meaning of a question, measured with embeddings.
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Source Authority
How much a system trusts a source, based on relevance, reputation, freshness and who else cites it.
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Query Fan Out
When an AI system splits one question into several sub searches and combines the results.
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Answer Block
A short, self contained passage that answers one question directly, written to be quoted.
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Freshness Signals
Clues that a page is current: visible dates, real updates, changing facts and recent mentions.
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7 terms
Measurement
The numbers that show whether you are named, cited or missing.
Share of Voice
The share of relevant AI answers, citations or mentions that your brand owns compared with competitors.
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Answer Share
The portion of tracked answers in which your brand appears as part of the response.
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Citation Gap
The difference between the sources AI cites for competitors and the sources that cite or mention you.
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Prompt Market Fit
How well the questions buyers actually ask match the pages, proof and positioning you provide.
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LLM Visibility
How often and how favorably a brand appears in responses from large language models.
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Prompt Tracking
Running a fixed set of questions through AI assistants on a schedule and logging the answers.
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Citation Rate
How often one of your pages is cited when your tracked questions are asked.
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7 terms
Technical AEO
Crawl access, markup and files that help machines read your site.
AI Crawl Pathway
The route AI bots can follow to discover, render, understand and revisit your important pages.
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Schema Markup
Structured data added to a page so machines can read what the page is about.
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Semantic Triples
Subject, predicate and object statements that let machines read relationships between things.
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llms.txt
A proposed Markdown file, usually at the site root, that points language models to your key content.
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AI Crawlers
The bots AI companies run to fetch pages for training, search indexes or live answers.
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Structured Data Validation
Checking that markup is valid, matches the page and is eligible for the features it targets.
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Entity Linking
Connecting your brand to its official profiles so systems know they are the same entity.
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3 terms
Platforms
How the main assistants choose and show their sources.
Bing and Copilot
Microsoft’s AI assistant, which draws on Bing’s index and shows its sources.
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Perplexity
An AI answer engine that searches the web live and shows numbered source citations.
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ChatGPT Search
ChatGPT’s web search feature, which draws on pages OpenAI’s search bot has indexed and cites its sources in the answer.
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The AI agent and LLM glossary
More than 120 engineering terms with working code: RAG, MCP, memory, evals and more.
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Tools, data and guides
- AI Readiness QuizScore your business in three minutes.
- Agent Cost CalculatorWhat an agent costs to run each month.
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- Compare ModelsUp to four models in one view.
- AI GlossaryPlain definitions of agent and LLM terms.
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