GEO glossary
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of getting your brand mentioned and your pages cited in answers from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews. This glossary defines 37 GEO terms in plain language, with a source for factual claims and a guide for going deeper.
By Daniel Borodin, GEOHATS founder · Last updated · Sources checked
A
AEO
Making your content the answer that search features and AI assistants give, instead of one of ten blue links. In practice AEO and GEO cover the same work and most people use the terms interchangeably.
Learn more: AEO vs GEO vs AI SEO
AI crawler
A bot that an AI company sends to read web pages. Vendors now split them by job: search crawlers build the index an assistant cites, user-triggered fetchers open a page when someone asks, and training crawlers collect data for future models.
Source: OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlersLearn more: AI crawler user agents: the complete list
AI Mode
Google Search's conversational mode. Google says it is particularly helpful for queries that need further exploration, reasoning or complex comparisons, and that pages need no special markup to appear in it.
Source: Google Search Central: AI features and your websiteLearn more: Google AI Overviews optimization
AI Overviews
The AI-written summaries that appear in some Google results, with links to the pages they draw on. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet to appear as a supporting link, and needs no extra files or markup.
Source: Google Search Central: AI features and your websiteLearn more: Google AI Overviews optimization
AI SEO
A loose umbrella term. Some people mean optimizing for AI answers (the same as GEO), others mean using AI tools to do traditional SEO. Ask which one before you buy a service called AI SEO.
Learn more: AEO vs GEO vs AI SEO
Answer-first content
Writing that puts a direct, self-contained answer to the question in the first lines of a page or section, before the background. A short block that answers on its own is easy for an AI assistant to lift and quote.
Learn more: The page structure AI assistants cite
Applebot-Extended
A robots.txt token, not a crawler. Disallowing it opts your content out of training Apple's foundation models; Apple says it does not crawl pages and your pages can still appear in Apple's search features.
Source: Apple: About ApplebotLearn more: AI crawler user agents: the complete list
B
Bing Webmaster Tools
Microsoft's free console for site owners. Since February 2026 its AI Performance report shows how often your pages are cited in Microsoft Copilot, Bing's AI summaries and some partner integrations.
Source: Bing Webmaster Blog: Introducing AI Performance (Feb 10, 2026)Learn more: How to get cited by ChatGPT
BYOK
A pricing model where you connect your own AI provider API keys (OpenAI, Anthropic and so on) and pay the provider directly for usage, instead of the tool reselling AI usage to you with a markup.
Learn more: GEOHATS pricing
C
ChatGPT-User
OpenAI's fetcher for certain user actions in ChatGPT and Custom GPTs. OpenAI says it doesn't crawl automatically, isn't used to decide what appears in ChatGPT search, and that robots.txt rules may not apply because a user started the visit.
Source: OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlersLearn more: AI crawler user agents: the complete list
Citation
A link to your page shown as a source in an AI answer. A citation sends readers to you and shows the assistant used your page; it's different from a mention, where your brand is named but not linked.
Learn more: How to get cited by ChatGPT
ClaudeBot
Anthropic's training crawler. Blocking it in robots.txt excludes your future content from Anthropic's training data. Anthropic runs separate bots for search (Claude-SearchBot) and user requests (Claude-User).
Source: Anthropic: Does Anthropic crawl data from the web?Learn more: AI crawler user agents: the complete list
E
Entity
A distinct thing that search engines and AI models can recognize and describe: a company, product, person or place. When many sources describe your brand the same way, assistants can name it with confidence.
Learn more: How to get your brand mentioned in AI answers
F
FAQPage schema
Structured data that marks up questions and answers on a page. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in Search from May 7, 2026; the markup can still describe your Q&A to other systems, but the visible questions and answers on the page are what readers and assistants use.
Source: Google Search Central: FAQ (FAQPage) structured dataLearn more: The page structure AI assistants cite
G
Generative engine
A search or answer system that writes a response with an AI model instead of only listing links, often citing the pages it used. ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Claude with web search and Google's AI Overviews are examples.
Source: Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (KDD 2024)Learn more: What is generative engine optimization?
GEO
The work of getting your brand mentioned and your pages cited in AI-generated answers. The term comes from a research paper first posted in November 2023 and published at KDD 2024, which reported that GEO methods can boost visibility in generative engine responses by up to 40%.
Source: Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (KDD 2024)Learn more: What is generative engine optimization?
Google-Extended
A robots.txt token, not a separate crawler. It controls whether Google uses your content to train future Gemini models and for grounding in Gemini Apps and Vertex AI. Google says it does not affect inclusion or ranking in Google Search, so it does not opt you out of AI Overviews.
Source: Google: Google's common crawlersLearn more: AI crawler user agents: the complete list
GPTBot
OpenAI's training crawler. OpenAI says disallowing it means your content should not be used to train its generative AI foundation models. It does not control ChatGPT search; that's OAI-SearchBot.
Source: OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlersLearn more: robots.txt AI rules builder
Grounding
Connecting an AI model's answer to current information retrieved from the web or another source, so it isn't limited to what the model learned in training. Microsoft describes grounding as the system that connects AI to current, authoritative information.
Source: Bing Search Blog: Elevating the role of grounding on the AI web (Feb 12, 2026)Learn more: You rank #1 on Google but ChatGPT ignores you
I
IndexNow
An open protocol for telling search engines a URL was added, updated or deleted, instead of waiting for a recrawl. Microsoft Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex and Yep support it; Google is not among them.
Source: IndexNow.orgLearn more: How to get cited by ChatGPT
J
JavaScript rendering
Running a page's scripts to produce its final content. Googlebot renders pages in headless Chromium, but a Vercel analysis found that OpenAI's, Anthropic's and Perplexity's crawlers did not run JavaScript, so text that only appears after scripts run can be invisible to them.
Source: Vercel: The rise of the AI crawler (Dec 2024)Learn more: Free AI crawler check
JSON-LD
A way to add structured data to a page as a block of JSON inside a script tag. Google recommends it over Microdata and RDFa because it's the easiest format to implement and maintain.
Source: Google Search Central: Introduction to structured dataLearn more: The page structure AI assistants cite
L
llms.txt
A proposed Markdown file at /llms.txt that gives AI agents a short guide to a website and links to its key pages. Jeremy Howard proposed it in September 2024. It's a proposal, not a standard, and Google says no AI text files are needed for AI Overviews.
Source: llmstxt.orgLearn more: Free AI crawler check
M
MCP
An open-source standard for connecting AI applications to external systems such as files, databases and tools. With an MCP server, an AI assistant or coding agent like Claude Code or Cursor can read data and take actions in another product.
Source: modelcontextprotocol.ioLearn more: MCP servers for AI visibility compared
Mention
Your brand named in an AI answer, with or without a link. Mentions are what buyers read when they ask which tool or company to choose, so many teams track them alongside citations.
Learn more: How to get your brand mentioned in AI answers
O
OAI-SearchBot
OpenAI's crawler for ChatGPT search. OpenAI says sites that opt out of it won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. Keep it allowed if you want ChatGPT to cite you.
Source: OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlersLearn more: AI crawler user agents: the complete list
P
PerplexityBot
Perplexity's crawler for surfacing and linking websites in its search results. Perplexity says it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models. A separate fetcher, Perplexity-User, visits pages when a user asks a question.
Source: Perplexity: Perplexity crawlersLearn more: How to show up as a source in Perplexity
Prompt
A question you run through AI assistants on a schedule to see who they mention and cite, ideally phrased the way your buyers ask it (for example, "best CRM for small agencies"). A tracked prompt set is the basis of every visibility metric.
Learn more: How to track brand mentions in AI answers
Q
Query fan-out
When an AI search feature splits one question into several related searches across subtopics and sources, then combines the results. Google says AI Mode and AI Overviews may use it, so a page that answers one subtopic well can be drawn on even if it doesn't match the exact question.
Source: Google Search Central: AI features and your websiteLearn more: Google AI Overviews optimization
R
RAG
A technique where a model retrieves relevant documents first and writes its answer using them, combining what it learned in training with an external index. It was introduced in a 2020 paper by Patrick Lewis and co-authors, and it's the basic mechanism behind AI answers that cite web pages.
Source: Lewis et al., Retrieval-Augmented Generation (NeurIPS 2020)Learn more: How to get cited by ChatGPT
robots.txt
A text file at the root of your site that tells crawlers, by user-agent token, which paths they may fetch. It is standardized as RFC 9309, which notes the rules are not a form of access authorization: a bot can ignore them, and a firewall can still block a bot they allow.
Source: RFC 9309: Robots Exclusion ProtocolLearn more: robots.txt AI rules builder
S
Structured data
A standardized format for describing a page and classifying its content, such as marking a page as a product with a price or an article with an author. It's usually written with the schema.org vocabulary in JSON-LD.
Source: Google Search Central: Introduction to structured dataLearn more: The page structure AI assistants cite
T
Training crawler
A crawler that collects content to train AI models, such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot or CCBot. Blocking one keeps your content out of future training data without removing you from that company's AI search answers, which use separate bots.
Source: OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlersLearn more: AI crawler user agents: the complete list
U
User-triggered fetcher
A bot that opens a specific page because a person asked an AI assistant about it, such as ChatGPT-User, Claude-User or Perplexity-User. Some vendors say robots.txt may not apply to these visits because a user started them.
Source: Perplexity: Perplexity crawlersLearn more: AI crawler user agents: the complete list
V
Visibility score
A single number that summarizes how often AI assistants mention or cite you across your tracked prompts. Every tool calculates it differently, and AI answers vary from run to run, so compare scores over time within one tool, not across tools.
Learn more: How accurate are AI visibility trackers?
Z
Zero-click search
A search where the person gets the answer on the results page or in an AI answer and never visits a website. It's why being named in the answer itself matters, not just ranking below it.
Learn more: You rank #1 on Google but ChatGPT ignores you
Put the terms to work
Start with whether AI crawlers can read your site at all: the free AI crawler check tests robots.txt, firewalls and JavaScript in one go, and the AI crawler list explains every bot it tests. Then read what GEO is and how it works, or see how GEOHATS tracks your AI visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Grok.
By Daniel Borodin, GEOHATS founder · Last updated