If you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably absorbed a ton. This glossary is your quick-reference guide. Use it to brush up, explain things to teammates, or double-check what that weird acronym means.
We’ve kept definitions brief, human, and immediately useful.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
The art and science of getting your content chosen, quoted, or cited inside AI-generated answers. Think: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, Gemini.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
A broader umbrella term that includes AEO, but also other types of AI-generated content like summaries, images, cards, and product overviews.
Answer Share / Citation Share
A metric for how often your site, brand, or URL is mentioned inside AI-generated answers across various surfaces.
AEO Topic
A group of closely related questions that can be answered by a single, well-structured page. The AEO version of a keyword cluster.
Semantic Chunking
Writing clear, self-contained, paragraph-sized answers to specific questions that models can lift and reuse directly.
Structured Data / Schema Markup
Hidden HTML tags that help models and search engines understand what a page is about – including authorship, product details, FAQs, etc.
lms.txt / llms.txt
Experimental text files placed on your site to explicitly declare which pages LLMs should crawl or prioritize. Like robots.txt, but for language models.
Owned Content
Pages and assets you directly control – blog posts, help docs, landing pages.
Earned Content
Mentions of your brand or product on third-party platforms – like Reddit, YouTube, affiliate blogs, or roundup articles.
Marketplace Page
A long, structured page that compares multiple options in a given category. These tend to be favorites for AI engines answering “what’s the best…” queries.
Answer Variants
The many ways people phrase the same question. LLMs look across variants, so your page needs to answer more than just the head term.
AI Overviews (Google)
AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of some Google searches. Often include citations, visuals, and links.
SGE (Search Generative Experience)
Google’s broader rollout of generative search features. Merging AI answers into traditional search results.
Share of Voice (SOV)
A legacy marketing term now used in AEO to describe how often you’re included in answers relative to your competitors.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
The process behind most AI answers: the model searches the web, pulls in data, then generates a summary. You’re optimizing for that search + summarize combo.
GPTBot / PerplexityBot
Bots that crawl your site to power ChatGPT and Perplexity answers. You can allow or block them in your robots.txt file.
Citation Consensus
When multiple sources – blogs, forums, videos – say the same thing. LLMs often favor that idea or product in their answers.
You’ve made it already almost through the whole manual. Only the final chapter awaits, please see AEO & GEO Handbook 2026 – Summary.
AEO & GEO Handbook 2026 by People, business, and AI systems clarity coach Mike Moisio