Each definition below is written to stand alone. Nothing here requires reading anything else on this page, and nothing is defined using a term that is itself undefined.
Branded traffic
Visits from people who searched the company name. Branded traffic is not customer acquisition: those visitors already knew the business existed. Excluding it from a traffic figure gives the number that actually matters, and for many established companies what remains is close to zero.
Keyword cannibalization
When several pages on one website compete for the same search term. Search engines cannot determine which page answers the query, so they rank all of them weakly rather than one strongly. It is one of the most common and most correctable causes of poor rankings on established sites.
Full explanation, with a measured example.AI Mode
A separate tab in Google Search that answers a question with a full generated response, citations and follow-ups rather than a list of results. It runs several searches behind one question, which is why it cites more pages than an AI Overview and overlaps less with the top ten.
How AI Mode decides which companies to name.Generative engine optimization (GEO)
The work of being named and cited inside AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode and AI Overviews. It draws on the same pages as SEO and differs in who decides: a language model composing an answer rather than an algorithm ranking a list.
GEO compared with SEO.Keyword difficulty
A score, usually 0 to 100, estimating how hard it is to rank on the first page for a term. It is derived largely from the strength of the pages currently ranking. Difficulty below 20 generally means the positions are held by weak or unoptimised pages rather than by strong competitors.
Entity resolution
The process by which a search engine or AI system determines which specific organization a name refers to, where it operates and what it does. Businesses in cities with shared place names, or with generic company names, frequently fail to resolve cleanly, which prevents local search intent from reaching them.
AI Overview
The answer block Google generates above conventional search results for some queries. It names entities and cites sources. Appearing in it is binary: a company is either in the answer or absent, with no equivalent of position two.
AI visibility
The extent to which AI answer engines mention and cite a business when users ask questions in its category. Measured by mention count, citation count, which specific pages are cited, and the proportion of relevant prompts on which a company appears.
Generative engine optimization
Abbreviated GEO. The practice of structuring content so it is likely to be quoted in AI-generated answers. In practice it overlaps almost entirely with conventional search optimization, because AI systems predominantly cite pages that already rank well.
Answer engine optimization
Abbreviated AEO. Used interchangeably with generative engine optimization. Both describe writing pages that answer questions directly and are structured so a machine can extract a correct, self-contained passage.
Cited source
A page an AI system draws on when composing an answer. In many industrial and local categories, the most-cited sources for a company are third-party directories and review profiles rather than the company’s own website, which changes what corrective work is required.
Share of voice
The proportion of visibility a company holds across a defined set of search terms, relative to its competitors. It is more useful than raw traffic because it measures position within a market rather than an absolute figure with no context.
Schema markup
Structured data added to a page in a machine-readable format, usually JSON-LD, stating what the page is about. It allows search engines and AI systems to identify an organization, a service, a location or a set of questions and answers without inferring them from prose.
Local pack
The block of business listings Google displays above organic results for queries with local intent. It is drawn from business profiles rather than websites, which means a company can rank organically and still be absent from it.
Referring domain
A distinct website linking to yours. Referring domain count is a better measure of authority than raw backlink count, because a hundred links from one site carry far less weight than one link each from a hundred sites.
Authority score
A third-party estimate of a domain’s overall strength, generally on a 0 to 100 scale, derived from its link profile and traffic. It is a useful comparator but a weak predictor of performance in low-competition categories, where published page count matters more.
Crawl access
Whether automated systems are permitted to read a site, controlled through the robots.txt file. Blocking AI crawlers such as GPTBot or ClaudeBot prevents a business appearing in AI answers regardless of how well its pages are written.
Commercial intent
A signal that a searcher is looking to buy rather than to learn. Cost per click is the most reliable available proxy: advertisers do not sustain high bids on traffic that does not convert, so a high cost per click on a low-difficulty term indicates value that nobody has claimed organically.
Answer engine optimization (AEO)
Structuring content so an engine can extract a direct answer: question heading, answer first, lists, tables, FAQ markup. Built for featured snippets from about 2014; absorbed into GEO.
Full page.Citation (AI)
A link or named source inside an AI-generated answer indicating where the answer drew from. Being cited is distinct from being mentioned: a company can be named without its page being cited, and a page can be cited for a sub-question it never targeted.
Cost per click (CPC)
What advertisers pay for one click on a search term. Set by people who know what a buyer on that term is worth, which makes it the clearest public signal of a term's commercial value. A high CPC beside a low difficulty score means buyers are present and the organic position is unclaimed.
Crawler access
Whether a website's server returns pages to a given bot. A server answering 406, 429 or a challenge page to Googlebot or OAI-SearchBot removes the site from that engine's citations regardless of content. Checked first in every AI visibility audit.
Fractional SEO
Senior search expertise engaged part-time: diagnosis, prioritization, specification and review, with the company's own team building.
Full page.Large language model (LLM)
The class of AI system behind ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity: a model trained on text that composes answers rather than returning a list. LLM SEO, LLM optimization and LLMO all mean making a company citable by these systems.
Full page.llms.txt
A proposed plain-text file at a site's root describing the site and its key pages for language model systems. Provider adoption is unconfirmed; it costs one file. This site publishes one at
/llms.txt.
Query fan-out
How Google AI Mode answers: one question is broken into several searches run in parallel, and the answer is composed from the top results of each. A page can be cited for a sub-question it never explicitly targeted.
Full page.Speakable
A structured-data property (SpeakableSpecification) marking which passages of a page are written to be read aloud or quoted. Every page on this site marks its headline, lede, key facts and lead answers as speakable.
Zero-click search
A search that ends without a click on any result because the answer appeared on the results page. Began with snippets; expanded with AI Overviews. Seer Interactive measured organic click-through on informational Overview queries falling from 1.76 percent in June 2024 to 0.61 percent in September 2025.