GEO / AEO glossary

The vocabulary of AI search — what it means to get your brand cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews. Plain-English, answer-first.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

GEO is the practice of getting a brand cited inside AI-generated answers — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews — rather than only ranking in classic search results. The unit of success is the citation, not the position.

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)

AEO optimizes content to be the direct answer an "answer engine" returns. It overlaps heavily with GEO; AEO emphasizes answer-first structure, FAQs and extractable blocks so an engine can lift a clean response.

Citation status

Citation status is whether a given AI engine names or links your brand when it answers a target prompt. In 2026 it is the headline GEO metric — more decision-relevant than a classic rank position.

Share of voice (AI)

AI share of voice is how often your brand is cited for a set of prompts versus competitors, across one or more engines. It turns "are we visible in AI?" into a comparable percentage you can track over time.

AI Overviews

AI Overviews are Google’s AI-generated answer summaries shown above classic results. Being cited in an AI Overview is a primary GEO goal because it captures attention before the blue links.

Google AI Mode

AI Mode is Google’s conversational, fully AI-generated search experience. It is a distinct surface from AI Overviews and is tracked separately in a serious GEO program.

Front-loading (answer-first)

Front-loading means opening each section with a direct 1–3 sentence answer before the detail. It mirrors how LLMs are trained to respond, and a large share of AI citations is pulled from the first portion of a page.

E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust) is a quality framework. In GEO it is effectively decisive: AI engines favor sources with a named author, visible dates and inline links to primary sources.

Citation-worthiness

Citation-worthiness is how likely a page is to be quoted by an AI engine — driven by extractable structure, first-hand data, verifiable facts and authoritative entity signals.

llms.txt

llms.txt is a proposed file giving LLMs a curated map of a site. As of 2026 no major provider has confirmed using it in production, so its impact on citations is marginal — cheap to add, but not a ranking lever.

IndexNow

IndexNow is a protocol for instantly notifying search engines of new or changed URLs. Bing and other engines support it (Google does not), which makes it useful for fast indexing on the non-Google surfaces that feed AI answers.

AI-Native Service (AINS)

An AI-Native Service delivers an outcome run end-to-end by AI agents under human approval — not a self-serve tool. Salient is an AINS for AI visibility: agents execute the GEO method and a human approves what ships.