AEO & AI Visibility Glossary

Plain-language definitions for AEO, GEO, share of AI voice, and the technical signals local businesses need to become the name AI recommends.

AEO

Answer Engine Optimization — structuring content and signals so AI assistants cite and recommend your business in direct answers.

GEO

Generative Engine Optimization — optimizing for generative AI systems (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) that synthesize answers from multiple sources.

LLM SEO

Optimizing for large language models that recommend businesses based on training data, live search, and retrieved citations.

share of AI voice

The percentage of sampled AI answers in your market that mention your business, measured across multiple platforms and prompts.

answer engine

An AI system that responds with a direct recommendation or answer instead of a list of blue links — ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews are examples.

zero-click

A search session where the user gets their answer from AI without clicking through to a website — common in AI chat and AI Overviews.

entity

A distinct business, person, or place that AI models represent with facts — name, location, services, reviews, and schema help define your entity.

citation

A source URL or reference that an AI model uses or displays when forming an answer — Perplexity and Claude especially weight citable pages.

grounding

When an AI model anchors its answer in retrieved web sources or verified data rather than guessing from memory alone.

llms.txt

A plain-text file on your site that summarizes key facts for LLM crawlers — similar in spirit to robots.txt but for machine-readable business facts.

JSON-LD

Structured data embedded in pages that helps search engines and AI parsers understand your business type, location, and services.

schema markup

Standardized vocabulary (often JSON-LD) describing entities on your site — LocalBusiness, FAQPage, and Organization are common for local firms.

NAP

Name, Address, Phone — consistency across directories matters because AI and maps pull from listing aggregators.

Apple Business Connect

Apple's free business listing platform feeding Siri, Apple Maps, and Apple Intelligence — often under-claimed compared to Google Business Profile.

Google Business Profile

Google's local listing product (formerly GMB) — heavily weighted by Gemini and AI Overviews for local recommendations.

AI visibility

How often and how prominently your business appears when AI assistants answer buyer-intent questions in your category and market.

mention rate

The share of AI responses that include your business name when sampled across prompts and platforms.

Growth Engine

AIrecommend.ai's eight-module delivery stack — reviews, listings, entity profile, GBP, studies, press, awards, and accuracy repair.

Super Pixel

First-party script that detects visitors from AI platforms and ties them to form fills, calls, and booked jobs.

approval queue

Dashboard workflow where drafted posts, review replies, and releases wait for client approval before publishing.

review gating

Routing happy customers to public review sites and unhappy ones elsewhere — violates platform policies and erodes trust signals AI reads.

AI accuracy repair

Process of detecting wrong facts repeated by AI, tracing likely sources, and fixing listings, schema, or citations — with client approval.

data study

A citable page built from public datasets with sourced statistics — Perplexity and Claude often prefer quotable, traceable numbers.

buyer-intent prompt

A natural-language question a real customer would ask AI when choosing who to hire — the core unit we sample for visibility scoring.

platform blind spot

An AI engine where competitors appear but your business is never mentioned — common because engines use different source mixes.