GEO Glossary
81 AI search terms, defined simply
81 terms
A
- Accuracy / Representation quality
- Measures whether AI describes you correctly (category, offer, differentiation). Being cited but described wrongly = lost value.
- Action plan
- Ordered list of actions to carry out (technical, content, evidence, structure, monitoring) to win positions in AI answers.
- Actionable strategy
- Strategy translated into concrete, prioritised actions, with a sequence, an effort and expected results.
- AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
- Another name for GEO, adopted notably by HubSpot: the practice of being cited, and accurately described, in AI engine answers. Both terms describe the same discipline, see the article “AEO or GEO: two names for the same discipline”.
- AI answers
- Final results displayed by an AI. Being absent amounts to functional invisibility.
- AI competitive analysis
- Analysis of who dominates AI answers on high-value queries, and of the concrete reasons behind that dominance.
- AI positioning
- How an AI describes and ranks a brand (category, strengths, role) in an answer. Goal: to be described accurately and favourably.
- AI visibility
- Level of presence and quality of representation of a brand in AI answers.
- AI visibility audit
- Real measurement of a brand's presence in AI answers across a set of key queries.
- AI visibility tests
- Repeatable tests across several AI platforms to observe who is cited, how, and how often.
- Automated tests
- Tests run repeatedly without manual intervention to track AI visibility at a fixed cadence.
- Automatic alerts
- Notifications triggered when visibility drops on key queries, so you can correct course before the loss sets in.
B
- Benchmarking
- Structured method for comparing your AI visibility with that of competitors on the same panel (queries, platforms, protocol).
- Business potential
- Estimated commercial value tied to the queries where AI visibility influences the decision (leads, revenue, market share).
C
- Canonical
- Technical signal that indicates the main version of a page when several variants exist, to avoid dilution (duplicate content).
- Chunking / Segmentation
- Splitting content into coherent blocks (sections) so that AI can retrieve and reuse exactly the right passages.
- Citation rate
- How often your brand or your pages are cited in AI answers across a panel of queries.
- Citations / Attributions
- Explicit indications of the sources an AI used. The goal: to be a stable, clear and "citable" source.
- Comparative narrative
- The discourse an AI generates when it compares options. Structuring and influencing it is a key issue.
- Constant, measurable protocol
- Strict framework (queries, platforms, conditions) that guarantees comparable results over time and between competitors.
- Content pruning
- Removing, merging or rewriting weak, outdated or duplicate content to concentrate authority and improve clarity.
- Core Web Vitals
- UX and performance indicators (loading, interactivity, visual stability). A direct impact on experience and often on SEO.
- Crawl
- Crawlers exploring your pages. Without reliable crawling, there is no indexing and no fast update.
- Crawl budget
- Amount of resources that crawlers allocate to your site. A limited budget can slow down how pages are discovered and updated.
- Cumulative effect
- Progress that compounds: the more correctly a brand is cited, the more often it gets recommended.
D
- Direct source of leads
- When AI answers become an acquisition channel: users discover you, compare you and contact you.
- Drift
- AI answers changing without any change on your side (model, sources, competition). Worth monitoring to react quickly.
E
- E-E-A-T
- Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust. Credibility signals (authors, evidence, transparency, reputation).
- Ease of extraction
- An AI's ability to quickly isolate clean information thanks to a clear, readable structure.
- Embeddings / Vectorisation
- Turning text into numerical vectors to measure similarity and retrieve relevant passages (semantic search).
- Entities
- Identifiable objects (brands, people, products, places). In AI, clarifying entities reduces ambiguity and improves recommendation.
F
- Fluid positions
- Phase in which AI recommendations change a lot. Fast execution can shift visibility significantly.
- Freshness / Recency bias
- Tendency to favour recent information depending on context (news, prices, new products). Managed through dates, updates and sources.
G
- Generative engines
- Systems able to interpret content and produce structured answers.
- Generative search
- Search in which the user gets a synthesised answer produced by an AI rather than a list of links.
- GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
- Discipline that aims to maximise the likelihood that an AI identifies, understands and recommends a brand in its answers.
- GEO diagnostic
- Structured analysis of a site's ability to be understood, cited and recommended by AI engines.
- GEO score
- Summary indicator of GEO maturity, used to prioritise actions and track progress over time.
- Grounding
- Mechanism by which AI relies on sources (documents, pages) rather than making things up. The more "groundable" your content, the more you gain.
H
- Hallucination
- A plausible but false answer. The role of GEO: reduce ambiguity and provide evidence that locks in the truth.
- Hreflang
- Tag that indicates language and regional variants (FR-CA, EN-CA, etc.) to avoid confusion and serve the right page.
I
- Indexing
- Stage at which a page is added to an engine's index. Crawling ≠ indexing. Without indexing, there is no lasting visibility.
- Information density
- Amount of useful substance: data, evidence, examples, clear definitions and comparisons.
- Intent mapping
- Interpreting the real need behind a query (information, comparison, purchase). Content must match the intent, not just the words.
- Internal linking
- Internal links that organise the site. They guide crawling, strengthen clusters and clarify the hierarchy of content.
J
- JSON-LD
- Standard format for structured data that helps engines clearly understand an identity and an offer.
K
- Knowledge Graph
- Network of entities and relationships (brand↔products↔people↔places). The clearer and more consistent it is, the better AI "classifies" you.
L
- Lasting advantage
- Advantage created when a brand becomes a recurring reference in AI answers, making its position hard to dislodge.
- Locked positions
- Phase in which AI keeps recommending the same references. Getting into the answer becomes slower and more costly.
M
- Marketing and acquisition
- Mechanisms and channels that turn AI visibility into concrete opportunities: awareness, consideration, leads and revenue.
- Monitoring dashboard
- Dashboard that tracks AI visibility: queries tested, platforms, presence, positions and variations.
- Monthly reports
- Operational summary: changes, actions taken, decisions and priorities for the following month.
N
- Noindex
- Directive that prevents a page from being indexed. Useful for staging, unnecessary pages, or content to keep out of engines.
P
- Prompt injection
- Attack that tries to manipulate an AI system through text (hidden instructions). Important if you integrate a chatbot or RAG.
Q
- Qualified leads
- Prospects with real intent and a good fit. In GEO, the aim is quality at the moment of decision.
- Quarterly reports
- Strategic reading of trends: themes won or lost, opportunities, and adjustments to priorities.
- Query panel
- Stable list of queries tested to measure AI visibility. Without a constant panel, results cannot be compared.
R
- RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
- Approach in which AI first retrieves sources (pages, documents), then generates an answer based on those sources.
- Raw data
- Unfiltered data (exports, histories, logs) that makes it possible to validate findings and ensure transparency.
- Real-time tracking
- Continuous access to indicators and history, to steer actions quickly and react to changes.
- Rendering / JS rendering
- How content is rendered (HTML vs JavaScript). If the main content depends too heavily on JavaScript, some systems read it poorly.
- Retrieval
- Stage in which passages and sources are retrieved before generation. Optimising structure and clarity increases your chances of being "retrieved".
- Robots.txt
- File that guides crawling. Misconfigured, it can block key sections.
- ROI (Return on investment)
- Ratio between the value generated by AI visibility and the investment needed to obtain it.
S
- Semantic search
- Search by meaning and similarity, not only by keywords. Based on embeddings, close to how RAG works.
- SEO
- Optimisation for traditional search engines. Useful, but not enough on its own to win positions in AI answers.
- Strategic query
- High-business-value search in which AI visibility influences the decision and the choice of a supplier.
- Strategic scoping
- Clarifying markets, regions, languages, priorities and actual competitors to avoid a generic analysis.
- Strategy and positioning
- The set of choices that determine how a brand should be perceived, understood and recommended by AI in its key markets.
- Structured data
- Information formatted so that machines understand it without ambiguity (e.g. organisation, products, FAQ).
- Structured data types
- Types of structured data (Organization, Article, FAQPage, Product, Review, LocalBusiness, etc.). Choosing the right types reduces ambiguity.
T
- Tailored commercial proposal
- Proposal that links GEO actions → measurable impact → budget → ROI, with a clear plan that can be defended internally.
- Topic cluster / Silo
- Organising content into clusters (pillar page + related content) to strengthen the coverage and understanding of a subject.
- Topical authority
- Signal that a brand covers a subject completely, consistently and credibly, which favours AI recommendation.
- Transactional query
- Search close to the act of buying. Being absent here means a direct loss of opportunities.
- Twice-monthly tests
- Measurement cadence of twice a month, to detect reliable trends without overreacting to fluctuations.
V
- Vector DB (vector database)
- Database optimised to store and search embeddings (similarity). Often used in RAG architectures.
- Voice optimisation
- Adapting content to natural questions and direct answers, often in a Q&A format.
W
- Window of opportunity
- Period when positions in AI answers can still be won. Acting early makes it possible to settle in for the long term.
X
- XML sitemap
- List of pages offered to engines to make discovery and indexing easier (especially for large sites or new content).
No term matches.
