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AI search,in plain English.
The terms you will meet when you work on being found by Google and recommended by AI. Last updated 25 October 2026.
AEOAnswer engine optimisation
Structuring content so it can be used as the direct answer inside search engines: a featured snippet, a People Also Ask answer or a Google AI Overview.
AEOAI crawler
A bot that fetches web pages for an AI company, for example to answer a live question or to build a search index. Many major AI crawlers do not run JavaScript, so they only see text that is in the page’s HTML.
AI search visibility
How easily a business is found and recommended across search engines and AI tools. It combines SEO, AEO, GEO and AIEO, and is measured by rankings, answer capture, AI mentions and agent task success.
How we work on itAIEOAI engine optimisation, agent readiness
Making a website usable by AI agents and crawlers, so software browsing for a person can find prices and products, read forms and complete tasks such as booking or buying.
How we work on itAnswer accuracy
Whether what an AI tool says about a business, such as prices, services, hours and locations, is correct.
Buyer question
A question a real customer would ask before choosing a business, written in their own words, such as “Who’s a good family lawyer in Parramatta?”.
Citation
A link or named source that an AI answer points to. Being cited means the answer credits your page, not just your name.
Citation rate
The share of tracked AI answers that link to or cite a business’s own website.
Core Web Vitals
Google’s three measures of page experience: how fast the main content loads (LCP), how quickly the page responds (INP), and how much the layout shifts (CLS).
E-E-A-TExperience, expertise, authoritativeness, trust
The qualities Google’s guidelines use to describe reliable content. Named authors, real credentials and accurate, sourced information all contribute.
Entity
A business, person or thing that search engines and AI tools recognise as one distinct item. Consistent names, details and links across the web help them connect everything about a business to the right entity.
Featured snippet
A short answer Google shows at the top of some results, quoted from one page, with a link to it.
GEOGenerative engine optimisation
Improving how often and how accurately AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot and Google AI Overviews mention and recommend a business.
GEOGoogle AI Overviews
AI-written summaries that Google shows above some search results, with links to the pages they draw on.
Google Business Profile
A business’s listing on Google Search and Maps, with its address, hours, reviews and photos. It is one of the sources AI tools and local search draw on.
IndexNow
A protocol that lets a website tell search engines such as Bing the moment a page is added or changed, so it is picked up sooner.
JSON-LD
The format Google recommends for adding structured data to a page, as a block of code that visitors don’t see.
Large language modelLLM
The kind of AI model behind tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. It writes answers from patterns learned in training and, in many tools, from pages it fetches from the web.
llms.txt
A plain-text file at the root of a website that summarises what the site is and links to its key pages, written for AI tools to read.
Mention rate
The share of tracked AI answers that name a business, across a fixed set of questions and AI tools.
People Also Ask
A Google results box of related questions, each of which expands into a short answer quoted from a web page.
SEOSearch engine optimisation
The work of making a website rank in Google and Bing for the searches its customers make. It is also the foundation for AI visibility, because many AI tools search the web before they answer.
SEOServer-side rendering
Building a web page’s HTML on the server, so the text is present before any JavaScript runs. It makes pages readable by search engines and AI crawlers.
Structured dataSchema markup
Labels added to a web page, using the schema.org vocabulary, that tell search engines and AI tools exactly what the page describes: a business, a service, a person, a question and its answer.
Zero-click search
A search where the person gets what they need from the results page or an AI answer without clicking through to a website.
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