Arrow GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
The practice of structuring a brand — its entity data, pages, proof, and schema — so AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity can understand, verify, and cite it inside generated answers.
GEO glossary
The vocabulary of the answer era
Twelve terms, defined in plain language — the shared vocabulary behind GEO, AI visibility, and getting cited by AI engines. Written to be quoted.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
An earlier name for the same discipline as GEO: optimizing to be the answer an engine gives, rather than a link it lists. GEO and AEO are used interchangeably.
AI visibility
How present a brand is across AI surfaces: whether assistants mention it, cite its pages as sources, or recommend it when buyers ask category questions.
Citation
When an AI answer links or names a source for a claim. Citations are the GEO equivalent of rankings — the scoreboard that shows retrieval and trust.
Mention vs. recommendation
A mention is the brand appearing in an answer; a recommendation is the engine advising it for a need. Recommendations carry the buying intent — they are the end goal of GEO.
Entity
The machine-readable identity of a company: one canonical name, consistent descriptions, and links across the site, schema, and third-party sources. Ambiguous entities do not get cited.
Answer-shaped page
A page built the way engines retrieve: a heading that states the question, a first paragraph that answers it completely, then structure — FAQs, tables, schema, internal links.
Google AI Overviews
Google's generated answers shown above organic results, grounded in the search index. Overviews cite a short list of sources chosen for eligibility, passage clarity, and corroboration.
llms.txt
A plain-text file at a site's root that gives AI systems a curated summary of what the company does and its key pages — like robots.txt, but for guiding AI understanding rather than blocking crawlers.
Schema / structured data (JSON-LD)
Machine-readable markup (Organization, Service, FAQPage, Article…) embedded in pages so engines can resolve entities, offers, and questions without guessing.
Corroboration
Independent confirmation of a brand's claims across third-party sources — reviews, directories, press, case studies. Engines cite claims they can verify elsewhere.
GEO score
A 0–100 measure of how citeable a brand is, combining entity clarity, structured content signals, authority, technical readiness, and per-platform citation likelihood.
From words to numbers
See your own GEO score
The free scan applies every concept on this page to your domain — score, per-platform checks, quick wins.
Go deeper: the ChatGPT playbook · the AI Overviews playbook · GEO vs SEO