Glossary: the language of AI visibility.

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The Accuracy Check compares every statement AI assistants make about a business with its approved fact register, and grades each error Critical, Major or Minor.

The practice of improving whether, and how accurately, a brand appears in the answers AI assistants and AI search features give. Where SEO aims for a place in a list of links, AEO aims for a place in the answer itself.

See also: GEO, AI visibility, AEO vs GEO vs SEO

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The Agent-Ready Check is a ten-point test of whether an AI agent acting for a buyer can find a business's key facts and take the next step on its site: get a quote, make an enquiry or book.

A conversational tool, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity, that answers questions in natural language rather than returning a list of links.

A conversational search experience from Google that answers complex questions with an AI-generated response and links, and lets people ask follow-up questions.

An AI-generated summary Google shows at the top of some search results, with links to the pages it draws on.

How often, and how well, a brand appears in AI-generated answers. It covers whether the brand is named, how it is described and which sources support it.

See also: Answer Share

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The Answer Chain is the path from a buyer's need to a decision when AI is involved: buyer, trigger, job to be done, question, AI answer, sources, shortlist, decision.

Any system that responds to a question with a synthesised answer rather than a list of results. AI assistants and AI search features are answer engines.

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The Answer Gap is the difference between the questions where a brand should reasonably be considered and the questions where AI actually names it.

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The Answer Grid places each of a business's important pages on two axes, how often AI assistants cite it for its target questions and how it performs in Google Search Console, so the team knows which pages to protect, rewrite, strengthen or retire.

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Answer Share is the share of AI answers to your buyers' real questions that name you, shown with its range.

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The Answer Standard is a seven-point check that every page we write or review must pass before it goes live.

A question that names a specific brand, such as asking what a named company offers. Brands usually appear in answers to branded questions; the harder test is unbranded ones.

See also: Unbranded question

A question a real buyer would ask an AI assistant while making a decision, written in their words and with their context.

See also: Question set

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A buying stage describes where a question sits in the journey: Not yet looking, Exploring, Comparing, Deciding or After buying.

A link or reference in an AI answer that points to a source it drew on. Not every platform cites sources, and not every source used is cited.

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Claim completes a controllable profile with approved fact lines and a review date.

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Compete seeks inclusion in influential sources that cover competitors, or builds a stronger answer to the same question.

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Correct requests an evidence-backed correction to an independent source, logged and re-checked in 30 days.

Software that visits web pages to collect their content. Search engines and AI companies use crawlers to index the web and, in some cases, to gather content for AI answers or model training.

See also: robots.txt

Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness: the qualities Google's search quality guidelines use to describe reliable content. It is a framework for assessing quality rather than a single measurable score.

Content about a brand published by someone else, such as reviews, news coverage, analyst notes or directory listings.

See also: Owned source

A distinct, identifiable thing, such as a company, product, person or place, that search engines and AI systems recognise and can connect to facts about it. Clear, consistent information helps systems identify a brand as the right entity.

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A fact line is a short, specific, approved sentence that states one fact about a business clearly, for use word for word in listings, profiles, press boilerplate and partner pages, so every source AI reads says the same thing.

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The fact register is the single approved source of truth that every page, listing and correction request draws on.

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Fix rewrites or updates a source the business owns, using the Answer Standard and the Answer Grid.

AI that produces new content, such as text or images, in response to a prompt, rather than only retrieving existing content.

The practice of improving how content and brands are cited and recommended by generative AI. The term was introduced in 2023 academic research and is often used interchangeably with AEO.

See also: AEO, AEO vs GEO vs SEO

Connecting an AI answer to external, retrievable sources, such as web pages, so the response draws on current information rather than only on what the model learned in training.

See also: Retrieval-augmented generation

An AI response that states something false or unsupported as if it were fact, such as an outdated condition or a service a company does not offer.

What a buyer is actually trying to achieve, as opposed to the product they end up buying. Starting from the job produces more realistic buyer questions than starting from keywords.

The point after which a model has no information from its training data. Answers about later events depend on the system retrieving current sources.

A structured network of entities and the relationships between them, which search engines use to understand and connect facts.

The type of AI model behind most AI assistants. It is trained on large amounts of text to predict and generate language.

A proposed file that summarises a website for AI systems, similar in spirit to a sitemap. It is not an official standard, and Google has said it does not affect search visibility.

Content a brand publishes and controls, such as its website, product pages and documentation.

See also: Earned source

The text a person gives an AI assistant: a question, an instruction or both.

A technique in which an AI search system breaks one question into several related searches and combines the results into a single answer. Google has described its AI Mode as working this way.

The fixed set of buyer questions used to measure AI visibility, tagged by buyer, buying stage and question type, and kept the same over time so results can be compared.

See also: How we measure

A method in which an AI system retrieves relevant documents first and then generates its answer using them. It is one of the main ways AI answers are grounded in current sources.

A file on a website that tells crawlers which parts of the site they may visit. Many AI companies publish the names of their crawlers so site owners can allow or block them.

A brand's share of the total mentions, impressions or advertising in a market. Unlike Answer Share, it is not measured question by question in AI answers.

Code added to a web page, often using schema.org vocabulary, that labels information such as an organisation's name, products or FAQs so machines can read it reliably.

A question that doesn't name any brand, such as asking which providers suit a particular need. This is where shortlists are formed, before buyers know which names to ask about.

See also: Branded question

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Watch marks rarely cited sources outside the buying decision for review at the next measurement, with no work this cycle.

A search that ends without the person clicking through to a website, because the answer was shown directly on the results page or in an AI answer.