Glossary

GEO & AEO glossary

Plain-English definitions of the vocabulary around getting cited by AI: GEO, AEO, AI citations, AI visibility, Google AI Overview, MCP and more. Each term is written to be quotable.

Generative engine optimization (GEO)Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of getting a brand cited in the answers AI engi…Answer engine optimization (AEO)Answer engine optimization (AEO) is optimizing content to be surfaced and cited by answer engines — …AI visibilityAI visibility is how often and how prominently a brand appears, is mentioned, or is cited across AI …AI citationsAn AI citation is a source (URL or domain) an AI engine references to support an answer. Citations a…AI citation APIAn AI citation API returns, programmatically, the sources AI engines cite for a given query — so you…Google AI OverviewGoogle AI Overview (formerly SGE) is the AI-generated summary shown at the top of Google results, wi…Model Context Protocol (MCP)The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets AI agents connect to external tools a…AI share of voiceAI share of voice is your brand's proportion of mentions or citations across AI answers for a set of…Hotspot sourceA hotspot source is a page or domain cited by multiple AI engines for the same query. It is the high…AI searchAI search is search powered by large language models that returns a synthesized answer with citation…LLM SEOLLM SEO is an informal synonym for GEO/AEO: optimizing to be cited by large language models. The mor…