AEO Glossary

AI Overview

Google's AI-generated answer box that appears above organic results.

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)

The practice of optimizing content so AI answer engines cite and reference it.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

A synonym for AEO, focused specifically on generative AI responses.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

The technique LLMs use to fetch external content and cite it in answers.

Answer Capsule

A 1-3 sentence direct answer placed immediately after a heading.

Extractability

How easily an AI engine can pull a self-contained answer from a page.

Question Heading

An H2 or H3 phrased as a question that matches user queries.

Article Schema

JSON-LD markup that identifies a page as an article with author, date, and publisher.

BreadcrumbList Schema

JSON-LD markup describing a page's position in a site hierarchy.

FAQPage Schema

JSON-LD structured data that marks up a page's Q&A content for search engines.

HowTo Schema

JSON-LD markup for step-by-step instructional content.

JSON-LD

The preferred format for structured data, written as JSON inside a script tag.

Schema.org

The open vocabulary of structured data types used across search and AI engines.

Structured Data

Machine-readable information embedded in HTML to describe page content.

Canonical URL

The preferred URL for a page when multiple versions exist.

llms.txt

A proposed markdown file at a site's root that guides LLMs to important content.

Meta Description

A 120-160 character HTML tag summarizing a page's content.

robots.txt

A text file telling crawlers which parts of a site they can and can't access.

Semantic HTML

HTML that uses tags to describe meaning, not just appearance.

XML Sitemap

A file listing all indexable URLs on a site, submitted to search engines.

ClaudeBot

Anthropic's crawler used for training Claude models.

Google-Extended

A user agent control that determines whether Google can use your content to train Gemini.

GPTBot

OpenAI's crawler used for training ChatGPT models.

OAI-SearchBot

OpenAI's crawler for ChatGPT Search, separate from GPTBot.

PerplexityBot

Perplexity AI's crawler for indexing content it cites in answers.

Authority

A page or domain's overall credibility, measured by backlinks and citations.

Citation (AI)

An inline reference in an AI answer pointing to a source URL.

E-E-A-T

Google's quality framework: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness.

Freshness Signal

Indicators of how recently a page was published or updated.

Zero-Click Search

A search where the user gets their answer without clicking any result.