AEO / GEO / LLMO Glossary

Strategy

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is a strategy for optimizing content to be cited directly by AI assistants and voice search. Unlike SEO which targets search result rankings, AEO aims to position your content as the source of answers provided by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other conversational AIs.

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AEO Audit (Answer Engine Optimization)

An AEO audit analyzes your brand's visibility in AI answer engine responses (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini). It identifies if you're cited, how you're presented, and improvement opportunities.

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AI Act (EU Regulation)

The AI Act is the European regulation on artificial intelligence, adopted in 2024. It classifies AI systems by risk and imposes obligations on developers and deployers of AI.

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AI Agent

An AI agent is an autonomous artificial intelligence system capable of planning, executing actions and using external tools to accomplish complex tasks iteratively.

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AI Average Position

The AI Average Position indicates the average rank at which your brand is cited in conversational AI responses, from 1st position (most visible) to lower positions.

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AI Brand Monitoring

AI Brand Monitoring refers to the practices and tools used to track what conversational AI systems (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) say about a brand, including hallucination detection and reputation tracking.

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AI Citation

An AI citation is when an AI assistant references your brand, website, or content as a source. Citations are the ultimate AEO goal - being explicitly mentioned and recommended by AI.

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AI Compliance

AI compliance refers to adhering to regulations governing artificial intelligence use, including the AI Act, GDPR for data, and industry-specific rules. Essential for businesses using or being referenced by AI.

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AI Conversion Rate

AI Conversion Rate measures the percentage of visitors from conversational AI that complete a desired action. In 2026, AI referral traffic converts at 14.2% vs 2.8% for Google — 5 times higher.

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AI Indexing

AI indexing is the process by which your content becomes accessible to AI systems - either through training data, RAG databases, or real-time web access. Different from traditional search indexing.

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AI Market Share

AI Market Share refers to the distribution of traffic and users across different conversational AI platforms. In 2026, ChatGPT dominates with 68% market share, followed by Gemini (18.2%) and Perplexity (15%).

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AI Optimization

AI optimization encompasses all strategies aimed at improving a brand's visibility in artificial intelligence responses. It includes AEO, GEO, and LLMO.

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AI Overviews (Google SGE)

AI Overviews are Google's AI-generated summaries displayed at the top of search results. Part of the Search Generative Experience (SGE), they synthesize information from multiple sources.

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AI SEO Audit

An AI SEO audit combines traditional SEO analysis with AI visibility evaluation. It measures your presence on Google AND on ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini.

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AI Share of Voice

AI Share of Voice measures how often your brand is mentioned by AI assistants compared to competitors. A key AEO metric for tracking visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini.

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AI Tracking

AI tracking is the process of detecting and recording visits made by artificial intelligence bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, etc.) to a website, as well as traffic coming from AI platforms (referrals).

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AI Visibility Audit

An AI visibility audit is a comprehensive analysis of a brand's presence and reputation in conversational AI responses. It evaluates how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity perceive and present your company.

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AIO Audit (AI Optimization)

An AIO audit (AI Optimization) analyzes a brand's visibility in AI responses. AIO is a generic acronym used by some professionals as a synonym for AEO, GEO or LLMO audit.

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AISO Audit (AI Search Optimization)

An AISO audit (AI Search Optimization) evaluates a brand's visibility in AI search results. The term AISO emphasizes the 'search' aspect of conversational AI, as opposed to traditional Google search.

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API Key

An API key is a unique identifier used to authenticate requests sent to an API. It allows the server to identify the application or user making the call.

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Answer Capsule

An Answer Capsule is a concise, standalone text block designed to be directly extracted by AI assistants. It provides a complete answer in 2-3 sentences, optimized for AI citation.

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Answer Engine

An Answer Engine is a search system providing direct answers rather than links. Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Google AI Overviews are answer engines. AEO specifically optimizes for these systems.

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Anthropic

Anthropic is the American AI company founded by former OpenAI researchers, creator of Claude. A pioneer in responsible AI and Constitutional AI, Anthropic develops Claude models recognized for their safety, reliability and advanced reasoning capabilities.

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SEO

Backlink

A backlink is a hyperlink from another website pointing to your site. Backlinks are a key ranking factor for SEO and influence how AIs perceive your content's authority.

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Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft's platform for managing your site's presence in Bing search. Important for AEO as Bing powers Microsoft Copilot's web search capabilities.

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Platform

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is OpenAI's conversational AI assistant, powered by the GPT-4 model. Launched in November 2022, it revolutionized public access to AI and popularized the use of conversational AI assistants.

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ChatGPT Audit

A ChatGPT audit specifically analyzes how your brand appears in ChatGPT (OpenAI) responses. It evaluates mentions, sentiment, information accuracy, and competitive positioning.

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Claude (Anthropic)

Claude is the conversational AI developed by Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI researchers. Claude stands out for its large context window (200K tokens), safety focus, and nuanced response quality.

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Claude Audit (Anthropic)

A Claude audit analyzes your visibility on Anthropic's AI assistant. Claude stands out for its extended context window (200K tokens) and safety-focused approach, attracting a professional audience.

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Cohere

Cohere is a Canadian AI company specializing in enterprise solutions. Co-founded by Aidan Gomez, co-author of the original Transformer paper, Cohere provides generation, semantic search and RAG models for Fortune 500 companies.

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Context Window

The context window is the maximum amount of text (measured in tokens) that a language model can process at once, including both input and output.

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Crawl (Web Indexing)

Crawling is the automated process where bots explore the web to discover and index content. For AEO, being crawlable by AI data sources (Common Crawl, etc.) is essential to be included in training data.

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AI Provider

DeepSeek

DeepSeek is a Chinese AI company founded in 2023, known for its exceptionally performant open-source models (DeepSeek-V3, R1) developed at a fraction of competitors' cost. With 125 million monthly users, DeepSeek has become a major player in AI search.

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Deepfake

A deepfake is AI-generated synthetic media (video, audio, image) that realistically depicts someone saying or doing something they never did. Deepfakes pose brand reputation risks.

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Domain Authority

Domain Authority is a metric (usually 0-100) predicting how well a website will rank in search results. In the AI era, domain authority influences which sources AIs consider trustworthy.

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Quality

E-E-A-T (Google)

E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is Google's framework for evaluating content quality. In the AI era, E-E-A-T signals influence how LLMs perceive and cite your content.

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Embedding

An embedding is a numerical representation of text in a multidimensional vector. Embeddings allow AIs to measure semantic similarity between texts and are fundamental to RAG search.

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Endpoint (API Endpoint)

An endpoint is a specific URL of an API that corresponds to a particular resource or action. It's the 'entry point' through which your application communicates with the server.

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SEO

Featured Snippet

A Featured Snippet is an enhanced result displayed at the top of Google results (position 0), directly answering the user's query. Featured Snippets are precursors to AI answers and share AEO optimization strategies.

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Fine-tuning

Fine-tuning is additional training of an LLM on specialized data to adapt it for a specific task or domain. Fine-tuning allows customizing a model's behavior without training from scratch.

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Function Calling

Function calling is the ability of a language model (LLM) to identify when it should call an external function and generate the structured parameters needed for that call.

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AI Audit

GAIO Audit (Generative AI Optimization)

A GAIO audit (Generative AI Optimization) evaluates a brand's visibility in generative AI responses. The term GAIO combines GEO and AIO concepts to emphasize optimization specifically for generative AI like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.

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GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the optimization of content specifically for generative AI systems that synthesize information to produce unique responses. GEO focuses on how AIs understand, process, and reformulate your content in their answers.

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GEO Audit (Generative Engine Optimization)

A GEO audit (Generative Engine Optimization) is a comprehensive analysis of a brand or website's visibility in generative search engine responses like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. It measures how your content is cited, rephrased and recommended by AI.

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GPAI (General Purpose AI)

GPAI (General Purpose AI) is a regulatory term from the EU AI Act for AI systems capable of performing various tasks (like GPT-4, Claude). GPAI providers have specific compliance obligations.

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Gemini (Google)

Gemini is Google's multimodal AI model, integrated into Google Search, Workspace, and as a standalone assistant. Gemini represents Google's response to ChatGPT and directly impacts search results.

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Gemini Audit (Google)

A Gemini audit analyzes your visibility on Google's multimodal AI, integrated into Google Search via AI Overviews. Gemini directly impacts your visibility in the Google ecosystem.

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Grok (xAI)

Grok is the AI chatbot developed by xAI, Elon Musk's company. Integrated into X (formerly Twitter), Grok has real-time access to X posts and web search. With 64 million monthly users, Grok is a major player in AI search.

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Concept

AI Hallucination

AI hallucination is when a language model generates false, invented, or inaccurate information while appearing confident. A major reliability challenge that can affect brand representation.

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HMAC (Hash-based Message Authentication Code)

HMAC (Hash-based Message Authentication Code) is a cryptographic mechanism that uses a secret key combined with a hash function to verify both the integrity and authenticity of a message.

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AI Technical

Intent Matching

Intent Matching is the process by which AI analyzes a query to identify the user's intention and provide the most relevant response.

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SEO Technical

JSON-LD

JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is a structured data format used to communicate information to search engines and AI in a standardized way.

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Technical

Knowledge Graph

A Knowledge Graph is a structured database of entities and their relationships. Google's Knowledge Graph powers Knowledge Panels and helps AIs understand connections between concepts, people, and organizations.

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Technical

LLM (Large Language Model)

An LLM (Large Language Model) is an AI model trained on massive amounts of text to understand and generate human language. Examples include GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, Llama. LLMs power modern AI assistants.

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LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization)

LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization) is a technical approach to optimize content for large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4, Claude, or Llama. LLMO focuses on how LLMs process text during training and inference.

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LLMO Audit (Large Language Model Optimization)

An LLMO audit (Large Language Model Optimization) evaluates a brand's visibility in large language model responses like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. It's a synonym for GEO/AEO audit focused specifically on LLM optimization.

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Llama (Meta)

Llama is the open-source large language model family developed by Meta. With 1.2 billion cumulative downloads, Llama is the world's most adopted open-source LLM, powering Meta AI and thousands of third-party applications.

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Local Search

Local search refers to geolocated queries aimed at finding businesses, shops or services in a specific geographic area, on both Google and conversational AI.

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Technology

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

Open protocol developed by Anthropic enabling AI models to access external data sources in a standardized and secure way.

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Machine Learning

Machine Learning is a branch of AI where systems learn from data to improve performance without being explicitly programmed.

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Mention Rate

The Mention Rate measures how frequently a brand or business is cited in responses generated by conversational AI like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.

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Meta AI

Meta AI is Meta's (formerly Facebook) artificial intelligence division and AI assistant integrated into WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger. With over one billion monthly users, Meta AI is the world's most widely distributed AI assistant, powered by Llama models.

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Mistral AI

Mistral AI is a French artificial intelligence company founded in 2023 in Paris, Europe's AI leader. Known for its efficient models (Mistral Large, Mixtral) and Le Chat assistant, Mistral AI is valued at $14 billion.

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Multimodal (Multimodal AI)

A multimodal AI can process and generate multiple data types: text, images, audio, video. Models like GPT-4V, Gemini, and Claude 3 are multimodal.

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Local

NAP (Name, Address, Phone)

NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone - the three core business identifiers that must be consistent across the web for local SEO. NAP consistency helps AIs accurately identify and cite local businesses.

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API Development

OAuth (Open Authorization)

OAuth is a standard authorization protocol that allows a third-party application to access a user's resources without knowing their credentials, using access tokens.

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Omnichannel AI (Multi-Channel Presence)

The Omnichannel AI approach ensures consistent brand presence across all AI channels: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and voice assistants.

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Open Graph

Open Graph is a meta tag protocol created by Facebook that controls how web pages are displayed when shared on social networks and helps AI understand content.

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OpenAI

OpenAI is the American AI company that created ChatGPT, the world's most used AI chatbot with 800 million weekly users. OpenAI develops GPT models (GPT-4, GPT-5) and o-series reasoning models.

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Platform

Perplexity AI

Perplexity AI is an AI-powered search engine that combines real-time web search with LLM response generation. Unlike ChatGPT, Perplexity always cites its sources, making it a key platform for AEO.

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Perplexity Audit

A Perplexity audit analyzes your visibility on the AI search engine that systematically cites its sources. Perplexity generates direct traffic as users click on cited sources.

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Position Zero

Position Zero refers to the Featured Snippet placement above organic search results. In the AI era, it represents direct answer placements that bypass traditional rankings.

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Presence Rate

The Presence Rate measures the percentage of AI responses in which your brand appears, across all questions, reflecting your overall visibility with artificial intelligences.

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Prompt

A prompt is the text instruction or question given to an AI to get a response. Prompt quality directly influences response quality. In AEO, understanding prompts helps optimize content for how users query AIs.

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SEO Strategy

Query Intent (Search Intent)

Query Intent refers to the intention behind a user's search query. Understanding this intent is essential for optimizing content for search engines and conversational AI.

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Qwen (Alibaba)

Qwen (Tongyi Qianwen) is Alibaba Cloud's AI model family. Since late 2025, Qwen has surpassed Meta Llama as the world's most downloaded open-source LLM, with 600+ million downloads and 180,000+ derivative models.

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Technical

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) is a technique that enhances AI responses by first retrieving relevant documents from a database before generating an answer. RAG enables AIs to access up-to-date information beyond their training data.

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REST API (Representational State Transfer)

A REST API is a programming interface based on the HTTP protocol that allows applications to communicate with each other by exchanging data in JSON or XML format.

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Rate Limiting

Rate limiting is a control mechanism that limits the number of requests a client can send to an API within a given time interval, protecting the server from abuse.

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Robots.txt

The robots.txt file is a text file placed at the root of a website that tells crawl robots (crawlers) which pages they can or cannot explore, now including AI crawlers.

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API Development

SDK (Software Development Kit)

An SDK is a set of tools, libraries and documentation provided by a service to facilitate the integration of its API into an application.

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SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the set of techniques aimed at optimizing a website's visibility in search engine results like Google or Bing.

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Schema Markup

Schema markup is structured data code added to web pages helping search engines and AIs understand content. Using Schema.org vocabulary improves how AI interprets your information.

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Sentiment Score

The Sentiment Score evaluates whether conversational AIs talk about your brand positively, neutrally or negatively, reflecting your company's perception by artificial intelligences.

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Structured Data

Structured data is a standardized markup format (Schema.org) that helps search engines and AI understand web page content precisely and unambiguously.

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Swagger (OpenAPI)

Swagger is a set of open source tools for documenting, designing and testing REST APIs. The OpenAPI specification (formerly Swagger) is the most widely used API description standard in the world.

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System Prompt

A system prompt is a hidden instruction given to a language model before any user interaction, defining its behavior, personality and operating rules.

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Systemic Risk (AI)

Systemic risk in AI refers to risks that could affect society at large - misinformation, manipulation, discrimination at scale. The AI Act has specific provisions for high-risk AI systems.

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Technical

Temperature (AI Parameter)

Temperature is a parameter controlling LLM response randomness. A low temperature (0-0.3) produces deterministic, factual responses. A high temperature (0.7-1) generates more creative, varied responses.

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Thematic Coverage

Thematic Coverage measures the diversity of topics and categories in which your brand is mentioned by conversational AIs, reflecting the breadth of your visibility.

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Token

A token is the basic text unit processed by LLMs. A token can be a word, part of a word, or punctuation. Context window limits are measured in tokens, typically around 4 characters per token in English.

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Tool Use

Tool use refers to the ability of an AI model to use external tools (APIs, calculators, browsers, databases) to augment its capabilities beyond simple text generation.

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Training Data

Training data is the massive dataset used to teach LLMs language understanding and generation. Includes web pages, books, articles that shape AI knowledge and biases.

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SEO Strategy

User Intent

User Intent refers to the overall goal a user seeks to achieve through their interactions with content or AI. It's a broader concept than Query Intent as it encompasses the entire user journey.

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User-Agent

The User-Agent is an HTTP header sent by a browser or bot with every web request, identifying the software making the request (browser, search engine bot, AI crawler, etc.).

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AI Audit

Visibility Score (AI Visibility Score)

The Visibility Score is a metric that measures the presence and quality of brand mentions in responses from conversational AI like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity.

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Voice Search

Voice search refers to queries made orally via voice assistants (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant) or conversational AI, using natural and conversational language.

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SEO Technical

Web Crawling

Web Crawling is the automated process by which search engines and AI browse the web to discover, analyze, and index page content.

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Webhook

A webhook is an automatic notification mechanism that allows a server to send data in real-time to an external URL when a specific event occurs.

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AI Technical

XAI (Explainable AI)

XAI (eXplainable Artificial Intelligence) refers to methods and techniques that make AI system decisions understandable by humans, a crucial issue for trust and compliance.

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XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap is a file that lists all important pages of a website, helping search engines and AI crawlers discover and efficiently index content.

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SEO Strategy

YMYL (Your Money Your Life)

YMYL (Your Money Your Life) is a category of web content identified by Google that can significantly impact users' health, financial security, or well-being, and is subject to enhanced quality criteria.

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Behavior

Zero-Click Search

A zero-click search is when the user gets their answer directly in search results without clicking any link. With AI, zero-click becomes the norm, making AEO essential for visibility.

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