Glossary
AI search glossary
Short, careful definitions of the terms that come up when you track how AI platforms talk about your brand. Ten entries, written for operators.
Generative Engine Optimization GEO
Shaping content, site structure, and third-party coverage to earn mentions and citations inside AI-generated answers.
Read definitionAnswer Engine Optimization AEO
The broader discipline of preparing content for direct-answer surfaces: featured snippets, Google AI Overview, and conversational answer engines.
Read definitionGoogle AI Overview
The AI-generated summary Google places above classic search results on qualifying queries.
Read definitionGoogle AI Mode
Google's separate conversational search surface. The response replaces the classic results page for qualifying queries.
Read definitionLLMs.txt
A proposed plain-text manifest that points AI crawlers at the highest-signal pages on your site. Adoption is mixed.
Read definitionLarge Language Model LLM
The neural-network model class that powers ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, and the rest.
Read definitionPrompt Fan-Out
Expanding a seed topic into dozens of realistic buyer prompts, so tracking reflects the shape of real demand.
Read definitionShare of Voice in AI
The percentage of tracked AI answers that name your brand versus each competitor.
Read definitionAI citation
A URL cited as a source inside an AI answer. The currency of content authority in AI search.
Read definitionRetrieval-Augmented Generation RAG
The pattern of grounding a language model's answer in documents retrieved from a live index. Used, in different ways, by most AI search engines.
Read definitionLLM Optimization
Improving how large language models find, understand, and describe your brand, across both training data and live retrieval.
Read definitionAI Visibility
How often, how prominently, and how favorably your brand appears in AI-generated answers to the prompts your buyers use.
Read definitionBrand Mention Rate
The share of tracked AI answers in which your brand is named, whether or not a source link is shown.
Read definitionCitation Rate
The share of tracked AI answers that cite at least one URL from your domain as a source.
Read definitionSource Attribution
How an AI answer credits the pages or publishers behind its claims, through links, footnotes, or named sources.
Read definitionQuery Fan-Out
The way an AI search system splits one question into several sub-queries and combines the results into a single answer.
Read definitionGrounding
Tying a language model's answer to external sources, such as a search index or your documents, so claims can be checked.
Read definitionKnowledge Cutoff
The date after which a language model has no training data, so anything newer must come from live retrieval.
Read definitionTraining Data vs Live Retrieval
The two ways an AI answer learns about your brand: from the data the model was trained on, or from pages fetched at answer time.
Read definitionAI Crawler
A bot operated by an AI company that fetches web pages for model training, search indexing, or answering a user's request.
Read definitionGPTBot
OpenAI's web crawler, which OpenAI documents as used to collect content that may be used to train its models.
Read definitionClaudeBot
Anthropic's web crawler, which Anthropic documents as collecting public web content for training its Claude models.
Read definitionPerplexityBot
Perplexity's crawler, which Perplexity documents as used to surface and link websites in its search results.
Read definitionGoogle-Extended
A robots.txt token that lets publishers control whether their content is used for Gemini training and grounding.
Read definitionrobots.txt
The plain-text file at a site's root that tells crawlers which paths they may fetch, including AI crawlers.
Read definitionSentiment Score
A measure of whether AI answers describe your brand positively, neutrally, or negatively.
Read definitionPosition in Answer
Where your brand appears in an AI answer's list or recommendation order, such as first, third, or last.
Read definitionPrompt Volume
How often a given question is asked of AI assistants. Unlike search volume, it is mostly not publicly available.
Read definitionBranded vs Non-Branded Prompts
Prompts that name your brand versus prompts that describe a need without naming anyone.
Read definitionEntity
A distinct, identifiable thing such as a company, product, or person that search and AI systems recognize and connect facts to.
Read definitionE-E-A-T in AI Search E-E-A-T
Google's Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness framework, and how it relates to being cited by AI.
Read definitionZero-Click Search
A search where the user gets the answer on the results page or in the assistant and never visits a website.
Read definitionAI Referral Traffic
Visits to your site that arrive by clicking a link inside an AI assistant or AI search answer.
Read definitionBrand Hallucination
When an AI answer states something false about your brand, such as a feature, price, or fact that does not exist.
Read definitionAnswer Volatility
How much an AI answer changes between runs of the same prompt, in wording, brands named, and sources cited.
Read definitionMention vs Citation
A mention names your brand in the answer text. A citation links to a URL as a source. They are different signals.
Read definitionStructured Data
Machine-readable markup, usually schema.org JSON-LD, that labels what a page is about so systems can read it without guessing.
Read definitionPrompt Tracking
Running a fixed set of buyer prompts against AI platforms on a schedule and recording how brands appear in the answers.
Read definitionAI Search Engine
A search product that answers in generated prose, with or without cited sources, instead of only listing links.
Read definitionConversational Search
Searching by asking full questions and follow-ups in natural language, where each answer builds on the previous turn.
Read definitionAnswer Engine
The software that answers a question directly, often with cited sources, instead of listing links.
Read definitionCitation Share
The portion of all citations in a set of AI answers that point to your domain.
Read definitionEntity Optimization
Making your brand, products, and people clear and consistent so AI systems can identify them correctly.
Read definitionTrack what the glossary describes.
Pineprompt monitors six live AI platforms daily, in the country and language your buyers use. See our methodology for what we capture and how.