Plain-language definitions for the core vocabulary of AI search visibility.
The practice of getting a business's content extracted as a clear, direct answer inside an AI system's response — rather than ranked as a link on a results page most people no longer scroll through. AEO rewards concise, well-structured content that directly answers a specific question.
Full guide: AEO Agency →The practice of building the depth, original research, and cross-source corroboration that makes an AI system treat a brand as a trusted, repeatedly-cited authority — not just a single extractable answer. GEO is slower and more compounding than AEO, since it depends on multiple credible sources reinforcing the same facts over time.
Full guide: Generative Engine Optimization Agency →The everyday, more commonly searched umbrella term for optimizing a business's visibility inside AI-generated answers. Usually refers to AEO and GEO work together — don't get hung up on which term a given agency uses; the underlying work is what matters.
Full guide: AI SEO Agency →An AI system — such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, or Claude — that responds to a query with a direct, synthesized answer instead of a list of links to click through and read yourself.
Full guide: What Is AI Search? →The practice of increasing how often, and how favorably, a business is named and cited inside AI-generated answers — combining technical work (structured data), content work (extractable answers), and ongoing measurement, since citation performance shifts as platforms update.
Full guide: AI Citation Optimization →The mechanism most AI answer engines use to generate responses: searching the web, pulling a set of candidate pages, and writing an answer grounded in the pages that most clearly and credibly address the question — rather than relying purely on memorized training data. First documented in a 2020 research paper, well before the current AI search boom.
Full guide: How AEO/GEO actually works →Start with a free AI Citation Pulse — five queries, results in 48–72 hours.
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