Glossary
AI SEO Glossary: GEO, AEO, LLM SEO and More
The terms you will meet in any AI SEO course, in plain English.
- AI SEO
- Optimizing a brand and its content to be found, cited and recommended by AI-powered search, alongside classic search results.
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
- Improving the chance that generated answers from tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews retrieve, quote or recommend your content.
- Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
- Making content the direct answer that a search or AI system gives. It grew out of featured snippets and voice search.
- LLM SEO
- Optimization aimed at large language model tools. Used almost interchangeably with GEO.
- AI Overviews
- Google's generated summaries shown above or among search results, with links to sources.
- AI Mode
- Google's conversational search experience built on generated answers.
- Citation
- A link or named source an AI answer shows as supporting evidence.
- Brand mention
- An AI answer naming a brand, with or without a link.
- How often a brand is named or cited across a set of prompts, compared with competitors.
- Query fan-out
- When an AI system splits one question into several related searches and combines the results.
- Grounding
- Tying a generated answer to retrieved documents so it can cite them.
- Retrieval
- The step where a system fetches documents to use in an answer. A page that is not retrieved cannot be cited.
- Entity
- A distinct thing a search system understands, such as a company, person or product, with known attributes and relationships.
- Prompt tracking
- Running a fixed set of prompts through AI tools on a schedule to see who gets named or cited.
- llms.txt
- A proposed plain text file that summarizes a site for language models. Support varies by platform.
- Zero-click search
- A search where the user gets the answer on the results page and does not visit a site.
See which courses teach each topic on the findings page.