Glossary

AI visibility and local SEO terms.

50 plain-language definitions covering AI visibility, answer engine optimization, and the local search systems behind them. Every entry starts with a direct definition, followed by practical context.

All terms, A to Z

Browse every term from A to Z.

A B C D E F G I J K L M N P R S T Z

AI Citations: AI citations are the sources an assistant links or names in support of an answer.
AI Crawler: AI crawlers are bots that fetch web pages for model training or live retrieval.
AI Hallucination: A hallucination is an AI assistant stating something false with full confidence — a business that doesn't exist, a service you don't offer, an address you left years ago.
AI Recommendation Openness: AI recommendation openness is a Routeless 0-100 summary of how widely business names were distributed across 18 sampled AI answers.
AI Search: AI search refers to search experiences that synthesize an answer, including ChatGPT with web search, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Copilot.
AI Visibility: AI visibility is how often and how favorably assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity mention a business in response to recommendation questions.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): Answer engine optimization is the practice of making a business easy for AI assistants and answer features to quote and recommend: publishing direct, factual, well-structured answers that ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, and voice assistants can lift and attribute.

Backlinks: Backlinks are links from other websites to yours.
Branded Search: Branded search occurs when people search for a business, product, or brand by name.

Canonical URL: A canonical URL is the version of a page you declare authoritative when several URLs could serve the same content — with and without trailing slash, tracking parameters, www or not.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): Click-through rate is clicks divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage.
Conversion Rate: Conversion rate is the share of visitors who complete a defined action, such as calling, booking, or submitting a form.
Core Web Vitals: Core Web Vitals are Google's measurements for loading performance, responsiveness, and visual stability.
Crawl Budget: Crawl budget is the amount of time and resources a search engine allocates to fetching a site's URLs.

Doorway Pages: Doorway pages are near-identical pages created per city or keyword purely to catch searches — the same template with a place name swapped in.

E-E-A-T: E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Entity (SEO): An entity is a distinct business, person, place, or other thing that search and AI systems can identify across sources.

Featured Snippet: A featured snippet is an answer Google extracts from a page and displays prominently in search results.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Generative engine optimization is the academic name for improving how often generative AI systems cite or mention a source in their answers.
Google AI Mode: AI Mode is Google's conversational search experience: a full-page AI answer with follow-up questions, distinct from the AI Overview summaries that sit above classic results.
Google AI Overviews: AI Overviews are the AI-generated summaries Google shows above traditional results for many searches.
Google Business Profile: A Google Business Profile is the free listing that represents a business on Google Search and Maps.
GPTBot: GPTBot is OpenAI's web crawler for gathering training data for its models.
Grounding (Web Search): Grounding is an AI assistant's use of live retrieved sources — usually web search — to answer, instead of relying on training memory alone.

Indexation: Indexation is whether Google has stored a page in its index so it can appear in search results.
Internal Linking: Internal links connect pages within a site, and they do three jobs at once: route visitors to the next useful page, distribute ranking equity from strong pages to new ones, and teach machines the site's structure — which pages matter and what relates to what.

JSON-LD: JSON-LD is the format Google recommends for structured data: a script block of JSON, using Schema.

Knowledge Cutoff: A knowledge cutoff is the approximate date after which an AI model's training data contains less or no information.
Knowledge Panel: A knowledge panel is the information box Google shows for a recognized entity — a business, person, or organization — assembled from structured data, authoritative sites, and Google's own graph.

Large Language Model (LLM): A large language model is the AI system underneath assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude: a neural network trained on vast amounts of text to predict language, which lets it answer questions, summarize sources, and make recommendations.
Lead Intake: Lead intake covers the steps between a prospect's first contact and a scheduled, qualified conversation: response, qualification, booking, reminders, and follow-up.
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Local Citations: Local citations are mentions of a business's name, address, and phone on other websites — directories, maps services, industry associations, chambers of commerce.
Local Pack: The local pack is the map and business listing block Google shows for many searches with local intent.
Long-Tail Keywords: Long-tail keywords are specific, lower-volume queries such as 'emergency plumber open Sunday north Austin.

Marketing Attribution: Marketing attribution connects a customer to the search, page, call, or other interaction that contributed to the sale.

NAP Consistency: NAP consistency means keeping a business's name, address, and phone number accurate across its website, Google Business Profile, directories, and social profiles.

People Also Ask (PAA): People Also Ask is an expandable question box in Google results.
Programmatic SEO: Programmatic SEO uses data and templates to generate pages for cities, products, comparisons, or other repeated categories.
Prompt: A prompt is the input a user gives an AI assistant — the question, instructions, and context it answers.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): Retrieval-augmented generation is the technique behind grounded AI answers: before responding, the system retrieves relevant documents — search results, web pages, database records — and generates its answer from them.
Review Velocity: Review velocity is the rate at which a business receives new reviews.

Search Intent: Search intent is the goal behind a query: learning something (informational), finding a specific site or place (navigational), comparing options (commercial), or taking an action (transactional).
SERP: SERP stands for search engine results page — everything a search returns: ads, AI Overviews, local packs, organic listings, snippets, and question boxes.
Share of Voice (AI): Share of voice in AI answers is the portion of sampled recommendation answers that mention a business.
Striking-Distance Keywords: Striking-distance keywords are queries where a page already ranks near the bottom of the first page or on the second, roughly positions 8 through 25.
Structured Data: Structured data is machine-readable markup — usually JSON-LD using Schema.

Thin Content: Thin content provides little useful or original information, regardless of word count.
Topical Authority: Topical authority describes a site's demonstrated depth and credibility on a subject.

Zero-Click Search: A zero-click search ends without a visit to a website because the result page provides the needed information or action through a featured snippet, AI Overview, local pack, or knowledge panel.

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