AI Search Glossary
The standard definitions for the era of Generative Engine Optimization. Citable, authoritative, and structured for extraction.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of structuring digital content and brand signals to maximize visibility, citation, and recommendation in AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google SGE.
Knowledge Graph
A Knowledge Graph is a structured database of entities (people, places, organizations) and the relationships between them, used by search engines to understand the world semantically rather than just through keywords.
Entity Engineering
Entity Engineering is the strategic process of defining and validating a brand's digital identity across knowledge bases to ensure it is recognized as a distinct, authoritative named entity by search algorithms.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
RAG is a technique used by AI models to retrieve fresh, external data (from the web or a database) to augment their internal training data before generating an answer.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring content so search engines and AI assistants can lift it as a direct answer, in featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, voice assistants, and AI-generated responses.
LLM Optimization (LLMO)
LLM Optimization (LLMO) is the process of improving how large language models such as GPT, Gemini, and Claude understand, describe, and recommend a brand, by strengthening entity data, third-party mentions, and machine-readable content.
Google AI Overviews
Google AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries shown at the top of Google Search results that answer a query directly and link to the web pages used as sources.
Zero-Click Search
A zero-click search is a search that ends without the user clicking any result, because the answer is shown directly on the results page or in an AI-generated response.
Structured Data
Structured data is code, usually JSON-LD using the Schema.org vocabulary, that describes a page's content in a standardized, machine-readable format, such as an organization, a service, an article, or a list of FAQs.
Canonical URL
A canonical URL is the preferred version of a web page that search engines should index and rank when several URLs show the same or very similar content. It is declared with a <link rel="canonical"> tag in the page's head.
llms.txt
llms.txt is a proposed plain-text Markdown file placed at a website's root (/llms.txt) that gives large language models a concise summary of the site and links to its most important pages.