The AI search glossary
AI search optimisation comes with a pile of jargon. Here is every term you will actually encounter, defined in plain English by AI Search King.
The terms, in plain English
AI search optimisation
The practice of preparing a business's online presence so AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini can find it, understand it and recommend it when people ask for suggestions. Also known as GEO or AEO. See the full guide: what is AI search optimisation?
GEO (generative engine optimisation)
An alternative name for AI search optimisation. 'Generative engine' refers to AI systems that generate a single written answer rather than returning a list of links.
AEO (answer engine optimisation)
Another name for the same discipline, framed around 'answer engines': systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot whose output is a direct answer instead of search results.
AI visibility
How often and how prominently a business appears in AI assistants' answers and recommendations. Measured by asking AI platforms the questions real customers ask and recording whether, and how favourably, the business is mentioned.
AI visibility score
A 0 to 100 measure of how findable and recommendable a business is to AI systems, typically combining AI visibility, domain authority, content quality, technical health, reputation and organic search presence.
Answer engine
An AI system that responds to a question with a single composed answer rather than a list of links. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity and Copilot all behave as answer engines.
Large language model (LLM)
The type of AI model behind modern assistants. LLMs are trained on large amounts of text and generate answers by drawing on what they learned in training plus, increasingly, live web retrieval.
Retrieval (RAG)
Retrieval augmented generation: the technique where an AI assistant searches the live web or a database before answering, then writes its answer from what it retrieved. Retrieval is why well-structured, crawlable pages can influence AI answers quickly.
Knowledge cutoff
The date after which a language model's training data ends. Anything published after the cutoff can only reach the model through retrieval, which is why ongoing, crawlable content matters.
AI crawler
A bot that reads websites on behalf of an AI company, such as GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic) or PerplexityBot. Sites that block these crawlers make themselves invisible to the corresponding assistants.
Schema markup
Code added to a web page that describes its content in a standard vocabulary (schema.org) that machines can read: who the business is, what it sells, prices, reviews, FAQs and more.
Structured data
The general term for machine-readable information on a page, usually written as JSON-LD. Structured data lets an AI system extract facts about a business without having to interpret prose.
JSON-LD
The standard format for publishing structured data: a block of JSON placed in a page's code, invisible to visitors but read by crawlers and AI systems.
Entity
A distinct thing a machine can recognise: a specific business, person, place or product. AI systems reason about entities, so a business whose name, services and details are consistent everywhere is easier to recognise and recommend.
Citations
Mentions of a business's name, address and details on third-party sites such as directories. AI systems cross-check sources, so consistent citations raise confidence; inconsistent ones lower it.
Topical authority
The degree to which a site demonstrates genuine depth on a subject through substantial, interlinked content. Models weight sources that clearly know their field.
llms.txt
A plain text file at the root of a website that gives AI systems a concise, curated summary of the site and links to its key content. AI Search King publishes its own at aisearchking.com/llms.txt.
Question-led content
Content organised around the literal questions customers ask, with direct answers. The format AI assistants find easiest to lift from, and the reason FAQ content features in every AI Search King campaign.
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