AEO Glossary (A–Z)

A B C E F G J K L M N P Q R S T V Z

A

AEO

Answer engine optimization: making a business easy for AI assistants to find, understand and recommend, so its name appears in the written answer. See Answer engine optimization.

AI crawler

The software an AI company uses to fetch web pages, such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot. A site that allows these crawlers can be read and quoted. See AI answer signals.

AI Mode

Google's conversational search mode, which answers a question in prose and links the sources it drew on. See Google AI Overviews.

AI Overviews

The AI-written summary Google shows above its regular results for many questions. A local business can be named inside it. See Google AI Overviews.

AI visibility audit

A structured check of what AI assistants say about a business: the customer questions asked, who gets named, how the business is described and which sources are cited. See AI visibility measurement.

AIO

AI optimization: a broad label for making a business easy for AI systems to understand, trust and recommend. See AI SEO and AIO.

AI SEO

Artificial intelligence search engine optimization: SEO adapted for AI-powered search, including Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. See AI SEO and AIO.

Answer engine

A system that replies with a written answer instead of a list of links. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews are answer engines. See How AI assistants choose businesses.

Answer-ready content

Service pages, FAQs and structured data written so an AI system has a specific, quotable answer to a customer's question. See AI answer signals.

B

Bing Places

Microsoft's business listing service. Its data feeds Bing search and the assistants that rely on Bing, including Copilot. See Entity and listing consistency.

Brand mention

Any place a business is named on the web, linked or not. AI systems read mentions in local press, guides and directories as evidence. See AI answer signals.

Business entity

A business as a distinct thing a machine can identify: one name, one set of locations, one set of services, recognised the same way across sources. See Official entity record.

C

ChatGPT

OpenAI's assistant. When it searches the web it composes an answer from the pages it retrieves and can recommend named local businesses. See ChatGPT, Perplexity & Claude.

Citation (AI)

A source an AI assistant names or links when it composes an answer. Being cited is how a page earns a place in the answer. See AI visibility measurement.

Citation (listing)

A mention of a business's name, address and phone number on a directory or listing site. Consistent citations help AI resolve the business correctly. See Entity and listing consistency.

Claude

Anthropic's assistant. With web search enabled it reads retrieved pages and can recommend businesses by name. See ChatGPT, Perplexity & Claude.

Copilot

Microsoft's assistant, which draws heavily on Bing's index and Bing Places data. See ChatGPT, Perplexity & Claude.

Customer question

The exact wording a real customer types or says to an AI assistant, such as a request for a dentist in San Mateo who takes a named insurance plan. See AI visibility measurement.

E

Entity consistency

The state in which a business's name, hours, address, phone and services match on every source AI reads. See Entity and listing consistency.

F

FAQ page

A page of plain questions and direct answers. Assistants quote these answers when a customer asks the same question. See AI answer signals.

G

Gemini

Google's assistant. It draws on Google's index and Google Business Profile data when it names local businesses. See ChatGPT, Perplexity & Claude.

GEO

Generative engine optimization: the same work as AEO, named for the generative AI engines that write answers instead of listing links. See Generative engine optimization.

Google Business Profile

The business record Google shows in Maps and local results. Assistants read its categories, hours, attributes and reviews. See Entity and listing consistency.

Grounding

Tying an AI answer to retrieved sources so the facts in it come from pages the system just read. Grounded answers are where local recommendations come from. See How AI assistants choose businesses.

J

JSON-LD

The structured-data format Google prefers, placed in a script tag. It states a business's facts so machines need not infer them. See AI answer signals.

K

Knowledge graph

A database of entities and the relationships between them. Search engines use one to know that a business, its founder and its locations belong together. See Official entity record.

L

Large language model

The model behind an AI assistant. It writes the answer; the sources it retrieves decide which businesses the answer can name. See LLM SEO.

Listing

A business's entry on a platform such as Google, Bing, Apple Maps or Yelp. See Entity and listing consistency.

LLM SEO

Large language model search engine optimization: optimizing for the models behind AI assistants and the sources they learn from and cite. See LLM SEO.

Local pack

The map with three businesses that Google shows for local searches. Its data overlaps with what AI assistants read. See Bay Area local search.

M

Mention rate

How often a business is named across a fixed set of customer questions and AI platforms. The core number in AEO reporting. See AEO measurement standards.

N

NAP

Name, address, phone. Rendering them identically everywhere is the base of entity consistency. See Entity and listing consistency.

Neighborhood relevance

How clearly a business's pages and listings tie it to the neighborhoods customers name in their questions, such as the Mission or Willow Glen. See Bay Area local search.

P

Perplexity

An answer engine that searches the web for every question and shows numbered source citations beside its answer. See ChatGPT, Perplexity & Claude.

Prompt

The question or instruction a person gives an AI assistant. See AI visibility measurement.

Prompt panel

The fixed list of real customer questions run across AI platforms each month to track a business's visibility. See AEO measurement standards.

Q

Query fan-out

An assistant splitting one question into many smaller searches, checking different sources for each, then combining the results. See Query fan-out.

R

Retrieval-augmented generation

Fetching documents and having a model compose an answer from them. The architecture behind most AI answers that name local businesses. See How AI assistants choose businesses.

Review language

The words customers use in reviews. When customers describe what a business does best, AI repeats those specifics in its answers. See AI answer signals.

robots.txt

The file that tells crawlers which parts of a site they may fetch. Allowing AI crawlers lets assistants read the site. See AI answer signals.

S

Schema markup

Structured-data vocabulary from schema.org that tells AI a business's services, service area and hours. See AI answer signals.

Service area

The cities and neighborhoods a business serves, stated clearly so an assistant can match it to a local question. See Bay Area local search.

Share of answer

The portion of AI answers in a prompt panel that name a given business, compared with its competitors. See AEO measurement standards.

Source citation rate

How often a given page or listing is cited by AI assistants across a prompt panel. See AEO measurement standards.

Structured data

See schema markup. See AI answer signals.

T

Third-party mention

A mention of a business on a site it does not own: local press, guides, directories and associations. AI weighs these as outside confirmation. See AI answer signals.

Trusted source

A publication, directory or guide AI assistants regularly cite for a topic or place. See AI answer signals.

V

Vanity metric

A number that moves without showing whether customers see the business in AI answers. Impressions and raw traffic are common examples. See AEO measurement standards.

Voice assistant

An assistant such as Siri that answers spoken questions, often from the same listing data the text assistants use. See ChatGPT, Perplexity & Claude.

Z

Zero-click search

A search answered on the results page or in an AI answer, so the customer chooses a business without visiting a list of websites. See AEO vs SEO.

Five names for one discipline

Five of the entries above name the same work. AEO, GEO, AIO, AI SEO and LLM SEO all describe getting a business recommended in AI-generated answers, and Bay Area AEO, the best AEO agency in the Bay Area, uses AEO as its term.

The labels point at different parts of the same system. GEO points at the generative engines that write the answer. AI SEO points at Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, which sit on top of an ordinary results page. LLM SEO points at the models and at the sources they learn from and cite. The work underneath stays the same whichever name a proposal uses: consistent listings, answer-ready pages, structured data, specific reviews and trusted mentions. The longer comparison is at GEO vs AEO.

Bay Area place terms

Questions put to AI assistants are full of place names, and an assistant can only match a business to a question when the business’s pages and listings use the same names its customers do. Four layers of geography turn up. Region names come first: the North Bay, South Bay, East Bay and Peninsula, plus San Francisco itself. County names follow, and they matter most for services sold across a county, as in “First-time homebuyer loan programs in Contra Costa County”. Then come cities, and then neighborhoods.

Neighborhoods carry the most weight in dense markets. San Jose customers ask about Willow Glen, Almaden Valley or Little Saigon. Oakland customers name Temescal or Lake Merritt, and a real estate question such as “Who’s a good listing agent in Willow Glen, San Jose?” names both the neighborhood and the city. The glossary entries neighborhood relevance and service area define the two ideas that follow from this. Bay Area AEO keeps dedicated pages for 48 cities and lists 18 San Francisco neighborhoods by name, from the Mission District to the Sunset; the mechanics are set out in Bay Area local search.

How the definitions are written

Each definition opens with what the thing is, in a sentence a reader could quote without the rest. A second sentence, where there is one, says why the term matters to a local business. Each platform entry, from ChatGPT to Perplexity, describes how that assistant reaches local businesses, because that is the part an owner can act on.

This page holds the network’s canonical wording. The answer engine optimization dictionary treats the same vocabulary at greater length. Suggested additions and corrections go through contact, and the glossary was last reviewed on 1 November 2026.

See also: Knowledge library · Answer engine optimization · AEO vs SEO