The terms that matter most.
These are the definitions you will encounter immediately when reading about AI visibility and generative search. Start here.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): The practice of making your business visible in the answers AI assistants generate. Where SEO targets ranked links in a search results page, GEO targets the written sentence an AI says when someone asks a relevant question. The goal is to be named, cited, or recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and similar systems.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization): Effectively the same discipline as GEO, described from the angle of answer engines rather than generative engines. The terms are used interchangeably by most practitioners. When someone says AEO, they mean the same work: structure your content and data so an AI assistant can give a confident answer that names your business. See the full comparison in What Is AEO.
Entity: How an AI system understands your business as a distinct, real-world thing — a specific name, category, location, and set of services — rather than an anonymous cluster of keywords. Your entity is defined by your name, what you do, where you operate, and how consistently those facts appear across your website, Google Business Profile, directories, and the broader web. A clear entity means a model can describe you without guessing.
AI Overviews: Google's feature that places an AI-generated answer at the top of search results for relevant queries. The answer synthesizes multiple sources and may name specific businesses. Being cited in an AI Overview is a direct GEO outcome — it means Google's model found your content clear and trustworthy enough to include.
Terms from the technical side of AI search.
You do not need to be a developer to understand these, but knowing what they mean helps you evaluate GEO recommendations and understand why certain tactics matter.
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation): The process many AI assistants use when answering questions that require current or specific information. Instead of relying only on what was in the training data, the system retrieves relevant pages from the web, reads them, and uses that content to generate an answer. If your site is not indexed or not readable by the crawler, you are out of the retrieval pool entirely. See the full explanation at RAG and business visibility.
llms.txt: A plain-text file placed at the root of your website (yoursite.com/llms.txt) that tells AI crawlers what your site is, what you do, and which pages are most important. It is the AI-crawler equivalent of robots.txt, but written for language models rather than search bots. A well-written llms.txt reduces misinterpretation and helps crawlers index your most important content first.
Schema markup (structured data): Code added to your website that labels information in a machine-readable format — your business name, services, location, hours, FAQ answers, reviews. Search engines and AI systems read schema to understand your content without having to infer it from text. Organization schema, Service schema, and FAQPage schema are the most valuable types for GEO purposes.
Entity graph: A structured database that maps relationships between real-world things — businesses, people, places, services. Google's Knowledge Graph is the most prominent example. Being a well-defined node in an entity graph (consistent facts, clear relationships, structured data backing it up) makes you more likely to be named in AI-generated answers that draw on that graph.
The AI platforms and what to know about each.
Each major AI assistant has its own name and its own data sources, though the GEO fundamentals work across all of them.
OpenAI's web-connected version of ChatGPT.
ChatGPT Search retrieves live web results via OpenAI's crawler and synthesizes them into a written answer. It names sources. Being cited here means your page appeared in the retrieval pool and contained a passage clear enough to quote. Standard GEO — indexed pages, direct answers, organization schema — is the way in.
An AI assistant built around sourced answers.
Perplexity retrieves and cites sources explicitly in every answer. It prioritizes freshness, authority (linked-to pages), and directness. Being cited in Perplexity means your page was crawled, retrieved for a relevant query, and contained a clear enough answer to include. Perplexity is often the first place to test your GEO progress because its citations are visible.
Google's generative layer, built on its existing data advantage.
Gemini and Google AI Overviews draw heavily on Google's entity graph, Knowledge Panel data, and GBP. A business with a strong, complete Google Business Profile and consistent schema on its site has a significant built-in advantage with Gemini compared to other AI assistants. AI Overviews appear at the top of standard Google searches for millions of Canadian queries daily.
Additional terms you will encounter.
These come up frequently in GEO discussions and proposals. Quick definitions for reference.
Zero-click search: A search session where the user gets their answer from the results page or an AI-generated answer without clicking through to any website. Growing as AI Overviews and direct answers become standard. For businesses, it means that being cited or named in the answer is more valuable than having the top-ranked link, because many users never click the link.
Citation: When an AI assistant names or quotes your page as a source in its answer. A citation is more valuable than a ranked link in the zero-click era because it delivers the recommendation directly. The goal of GEO work is to earn citations across the major AI platforms for queries relevant to your business.
AI visibility: A business's overall presence in AI-generated answers across the major platforms. Not a single metric, but a composite of how often and how accurately AI assistants name, cite, or recommend a business when buyers ask relevant questions. An AI visibility audit tests this baseline and finds the gaps.
Speed-to-index: How quickly AI crawlers pick up changes to your site. Unlike traditional SEO, where ranking changes take weeks or months, some AI systems re-crawl content faster and can reflect GEO changes in their answers within days to weeks. Fresh, frequently updated content tends to be re-indexed and re-retrieved sooner.
Related, and what to do next.
Questions, answered.
What is the difference between GEO and SEO?
SEO optimizes for a ranked link in a search results page. GEO optimizes for being named or cited inside an AI-generated answer. They share technical foundations — clean indexing, structured data, strong content — but GEO adds entity clarity, answer-shaped writing, and AI-specific signals like llms.txt and FAQPage schema.
What does entity mean in GEO?
An entity is how an AI system understands your business as a distinct, real thing. It is defined by consistent facts — name, services, location — across your site, Google Business Profile, and other sources. A clear entity means a model can confidently describe and recommend you. An unclear or contradictory entity leads to omission or inaccurate answers.
Do I need to understand all these terms to do GEO?
No. You need to understand the goal — being named in AI answers for relevant queries — and the key tactics: entity consistency, schema, answer-shaped content, and platform-specific listings. The glossary terms are context for understanding recommendations from a GEO agency or reading about the field.
What is the most important GEO term to understand first?
Entity. Most GEO failures trace back to an unclear entity — inconsistent name-address-phone, contradictory service descriptions, or no Organization schema. Before any content work, a business needs to define its entity clearly and make sure that definition matches everywhere AI systems might look.
Is the GEO glossary standardized across the industry?
Not fully. GEO and AEO are relatively new terms and different agencies use them with slightly different emphasis. The definitions here reflect how TRIVOX uses them in practice — rooted in what the major AI systems actually do — rather than any formal standard.