Glossary
The answer-engine alphabet, decoded.
Plain-spoken definitions for the metrics, systems and methods shaping AI visibility.
AEO
Answer Engine Optimization — the practice of making a brand findable, understandable and citable inside AI-generated answers, complementing rather than replacing classic SEO.
Answer inclusion rate
The share of tracked prompts whose AI-generated answers mention your brand at all, measured per engine, market and time window.
Citation
A source an AI engine points to inside an answer — a link, publisher or document it used as evidence for its claims.
Entity
A distinctly identifiable thing — a brand, product, person or place — that models resolve from text and connect to facts across the web.
GEO
Generative Engine Optimization — a near-synonym for AEO, emphasizing optimization for generative models that synthesize answers rather than rank links.
Grounding
The process of anchoring a model's answer in retrieved sources, so claims trace back to web pages instead of model memory alone.
LLMO
Large Language Model Optimization — an umbrella term for improving how LLMs represent a brand across training data, retrieval and live answers.
Prompt cluster
A group of buyer questions that share intent, so visibility can be measured per topic instead of per individual phrasing.
Retrieval
The step where an engine fetches fresh web content to inform an answer — the moment your pages can win or lose inclusion.
Share of voice
Your brand's portion of mentions across a defined prompt set and competitor set, weighted by answer prominence.
Source authority
The degree to which engines repeatedly cite a domain or publisher when answering questions in a category.
Statistical confidence
A measure of how trustworthy a metric change is, given sample size and variance — so small shifts are not mistaken for real movement.