Glossary
The language of AI search
AEO, GEO and SEO are three ways to be found: SEO ranks a link, AEO makes your brand the cited answer, and GEO builds the authority that puts you in the synthesis. Below are clean definitions of these and the other terms behind getting cited in AI answers.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring content and data so AI answer engines cite and recommend a brand directly inside their answers, rather than just ranking a link. It optimizes for being the answer.
AEO vs GEO vs SEO →GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
Generative Engine Optimization is the practice of building the entity and authority signals that make a generative model associate a brand with a category, so the brand appears in synthesized answers. It optimizes for being in the synthesis.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Search Engine Optimization is the practice of optimizing pages to rank highly in a search engine's list of links. It remains the foundation AI crawlers read, but ranking a link is different from being cited in an answer.
Answer engine
An answer engine is an AI system that responds to a question with a synthesized answer instead of a list of links — for example ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews.
Citation
A citation is a mention or attribution of a brand or source inside an AI-generated answer. Earning citations is the core goal of AEO — it puts your brand in front of buyers at the moment of decision.
Answer-first content
Answer-first content opens with a direct, 40–60 word answer to the question a page targets, before any elaboration, so AI engines can lift it cleanly. Burying the answer in long prose reduces the chance of being cited.
Structured data (schema)
Structured data is machine-readable markup (usually JSON-LD using schema.org types) that states facts — products, attributes, FAQs, organization — unambiguously, so engines can parse and trust them.
Entity
An entity is the model's internal understanding of a brand: its name, what it sells, and how it relates to a category. Consistent names, descriptions, and corroborating links across the web build a clean entity.
Agentic storefront
An agentic storefront is a shopping experience where an AI agent — not the shopper — researches, compares, and often transacts, pulling from machine-readable product data rather than a visual storefront.
How AI shopping works →llms.txt
llms.txt is an emerging plain-text file at a site's root that gives AI crawlers a concise, link-rich guide to the site. It helps models build a clean entity and cite the right pages.
AI Overviews
Google AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries shown above traditional results for some queries. Being cited within an AI Overview places a brand at the very top of the page, before the blue links.
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