A
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
The practice of optimizing your website and content so that AI-powered answer engines — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity — mention and cite your brand in their generated responses. AEO is the AI-era counterpart to SEO. See also: What is AEO?
AI Overview
Google's feature that displays an AI-generated summary at the top of search results pages, powered by Google Gemini. AI Overviews synthesize information from multiple sources and cite them inline. Optimizing for AI Overviews requires Google-Extended bot access and structured data.
AI Visibility Score
A composite metric measuring how often your brand appears in AI-generated responses across major AI engines. Typically expressed as a percentage: the fraction of tracked queries where your brand is cited. AEO Track calculates your AI Visibility Score at aeotrack.io/audit.
Answer Engine
An AI system that responds to queries with synthesized, conversational answers rather than a ranked list of links. Examples: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Claude, Microsoft Copilot.
anthropic-ai (bot)
One of two user-agent strings used by Anthropic to crawl web content for Claude. Must be explicitly allowed in robots.txt alongside ClaudeBot for full Anthropic crawler access.
Article Schema
JSON-LD structured data markup (schema.org/Article) applied to blog posts and news articles. Includes properties like headline, datePublished, dateModified, author, and publisher. Signals content freshness and authorship to AI crawlers and search engines.
C
Citation Eligibility
The binary first layer of AI search ranking: whether an AI engine's crawler can access your content at all. A site fails citation eligibility if the relevant AI bot (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc.) is blocked in robots.txt or if the page is behind a paywall or JavaScript gate.
Citation Rate
The percentage of AI responses — for a given set of queries — where your brand or website is directly cited with a link or explicit attribution. Citation Rate is the primary KPI for AEO performance. Distinct from Inclusion Rate (which counts any form of mention).
ClaudeBot
Anthropic's primary web crawler used to index content for Claude AI's training data and retrieval systems. Must be explicitly allowed in robots.txt: User-agent: ClaudeBot / Allow: /. See also: anthropic-ai.
Content Freshness
How recently a page was published or meaningfully updated. Content freshness is a particularly strong ranking signal for Perplexity AI, which weights recent content more heavily than other engines. Update dateModified in Article schema when revising content.
Core Web Vitals
Google's set of page experience metrics: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint, target <2.5s), CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift, target <0.1), and INP (Interaction to Next Paint, target <200ms). Core Web Vitals directly affect Google Search ranking and, by extension, Gemini AI Overview inclusion.
E
EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)
Google's quality framework for evaluating content credibility. AI engines — especially Google Gemini — use EEAT signals to determine citation worthiness. Improve EEAT by adding author credentials, citing sources, displaying clear organizational information, and earning authoritative external mentions.
Entity Clarity
The degree to which AI engines clearly understand what your brand is, what it does, and what topics it is authoritative on. Strong entity clarity requires consistent brand information across your website, structured data (Organization schema), and external references. One of the 5 pillars of AEO.
F
FAQ Schema (FAQPage)
JSON-LD structured data markup (schema.org/FAQPage) that lists questions and answers in machine-readable format. GPTBot and other AI crawlers can parse FAQ schema directly without rendering JavaScript, making it one of the highest-impact single changes for AEO. Add to every product page, blog post, and landing page.
G
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
The practice of optimizing for inclusion in AI-generated topic overviews and synthesis responses. Where AEO targets specific query citations, GEO targets category-level brand presence in broader AI-generated content. Measured by Overview Presence Rate and Synthesis Depth.
Google-Extended
A separate Google crawler specifically for Gemini AI training and AI Overview content collection. Must be explicitly allowed in robots.txt independent of Googlebot: User-agent: Google-Extended / Allow: /. Without this, content is excluded from Gemini even if Googlebot can crawl it.
GPTBot
OpenAI's web crawler used to index content for ChatGPT's training data and real-time web retrieval. The single most important ChatGPT SEO action is adding User-agent: GPTBot / Allow: / to your robots.txt.
H
HowTo Schema
JSON-LD structured data markup (schema.org/HowTo) for step-by-step instructional content. Particularly effective for process-based queries. AI engines extract HowTo steps directly for synthesis responses.
I
Inclusion Rate
The percentage of AI responses — for a given query set — where your brand appears in any form: cited URL, brand name mention, paraphrase of your content. Broader than Citation Rate. A brand can be included without being cited.
K
Knowledge Graph
A structured database of entities and their relationships, used by Google and AI systems to understand the world. Getting your brand into Google's Knowledge Graph (via Wikipedia, Wikidata, structured data, and authoritative mentions) improves entity clarity across all AI engines.
L
llms.txt
A proposed standard file (placed at /llms.txt on your domain) that provides AI language models with structured information about your site: key pages, content topics, preferred citations, and contact information. Analogous to robots.txt but for LLMs rather than crawlers.
O
Organization Schema
JSON-LD structured data markup (schema.org/Organization) that establishes your brand's identity: name, URL, logo, contact information, and social profiles. Foundational for entity clarity across all AI engines.
Overview Presence Rate
A GEO metric measuring the percentage of topic-level AI overview queries where your brand is included in the synthesized response. Distinct from Citation Rate (query-specific) — Overview Presence Rate measures category-level AI visibility.
P
PerplexityBot
Perplexity AI's web crawler used for its real-time search index. Add User-agent: PerplexityBot / Allow: / to robots.txt. Perplexity's index is updated near-real-time, so new content on high-authority sites can appear in Perplexity answers within hours.
S
Structured Data
Machine-readable markup (typically JSON-LD using schema.org vocabulary) added to web pages to help AI engines and search engines understand content context. Key types for AEO: FAQPage, Article, HowTo, Organization, Product. One of the 5 pillars of AEO.
Synthesis Depth
A quality metric for AI citations measuring whether your brand is a core, authoritative attribution or a peripheral mention in an AI response. High synthesis depth = your content is the primary source the AI draws from. Low synthesis depth = your brand appears in a passing mention.
T
Topical Authority
The degree to which a domain is recognized as an authoritative, comprehensive source on a specific subject area. Built through consistent publication of interlinked content covering a topic in depth. AI engines favor topically authoritative sources for citation over one-off relevant pages.
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