# The AI visibility glossary **Published 30 July 2026, Melbourne, Australia. By Answerable.** Canonical HTML version: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/ 32 AI-search terms defined in plain English: AEO, GEO, RAG, grounding, GPTBot, llms.txt and more. Written so people and machines can quote each definition. This is a plain-markdown mirror of the glossary, which is also published on the canonical page as a schema.org DefinedTermSet. Each definition below is reproduced word for word from the live page. Quote any of them with attribution to Answerable (https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/). --- ## The basics ### AI visibility AI visibility is whether AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews mention or recommend your business when people ask relevant questions. An AI assistant gives one short written answer, so a business is either named in it or absent. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#ai-visibility ### LLM (large language model) An LLM, or large language model, is the software behind tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. It is trained on very large amounts of text and generates replies word by word from patterns in that text, not from database lookups. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#llm ### Prompt A prompt is the question or instruction a person types into an AI tool. Different phrasings can produce different recommendations, so AI visibility is measured across many prompts rather than a single one. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#prompt ### Knowledge cutoff A knowledge cutoff is the date after which an AI model's training data ends. Anything published later is unknown to the model unless it retrieves live web results at the time it answers. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#knowledge-cutoff ### AI Overviews AI Overviews are the AI-written summaries Google shows above its ordinary results for many searches. They are generated by Google's Gemini models, draw on pages from Google's index and link to a small set of sources. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#ai-overviews ### AI Mode AI Mode is Google's conversational search experience, a separate tab where the whole results page is an AI-generated answer with follow-up questions. It runs on Gemini and replaces the list of links entirely. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#ai-mode ### Hallucination A hallucination is a confident but false statement produced by an AI model, such as a wrong address, an invented service or a business that does not exist. Models generate plausible text rather than retrieving verified facts. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#hallucination ## The acronyms ### SEO (search engine optimisation) SEO, search engine optimisation, is the practice of improving a website so it ranks higher in the ordinary list of search results on Google or Bing. Success is a position and a click. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#seo ### AEO (answer engine optimisation) AEO, answer engine optimisation, is the work of getting your business named in direct answers: featured snippets, voice replies and AI chat responses. There is no ranked list, so you are either in the answer or absent. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#aeo ### GEO (generative engine optimisation) GEO, generative engine optimisation, is the work of being cited or recommended when an AI system writes an answer fresh, as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity do. The unit optimised is the fact about your business and its sources. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#geo ### RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) RAG, retrieval-augmented generation, is the technique where an AI system first retrieves relevant documents, usually live web pages, then writes its answer from them. It is why current, crawlable pages can appear in AI answers. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#rag ### E-E-A-T E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, the framework Google's human quality raters use to judge content. It is not a direct ranking score, but signals associated with it also make content a stronger citation candidate. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#e-e-a-t ### NAP consistency NAP consistency means your business name, address and phone number are stated identically everywhere they appear: website, Google Business Profile, directories and social profiles. Contradictory listings make it harder for any system to state facts about you confidently. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#nap-consistency ## The crawlers ### AI crawler An AI crawler is an automated program run by an AI company that visits web pages and reads their content, either to build training data or to fetch pages while answering a question. Each identifies itself with a user agent name. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#ai-crawler ### Training crawler vs retrieval crawler A training crawler collects pages to build future AI models; a retrieval crawler fetches pages while answering a live question. Blocking a retrieval crawler removes you from AI answers now; blocking a training crawler does not. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#training-vs-retrieval-crawler ### GPTBot GPTBot is OpenAI's training crawler. Blocking it in robots.txt keeps your pages out of future training data, but does not remove you from ChatGPT's live search answers, which are fetched by the separate OAI-SearchBot. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#gptbot ### OAI-SearchBot OAI-SearchBot is the crawler OpenAI uses for ChatGPT's search feature. It finds and fetches pages so ChatGPT can cite them in live answers. Blocking it in robots.txt removes your site from those answers. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#oai-searchbot ### ClaudeBot ClaudeBot is Anthropic's web crawler, used to gather content for training Claude models. Anthropic uses separate user agents, such as Claude-User, when Claude fetches a page in response to a person's request. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#claudebot ### PerplexityBot PerplexityBot is the crawler Perplexity uses to build the index behind its AI search engine. Blocking it in robots.txt makes your pages unavailable to Perplexity's answers, which cite their sources prominently. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#perplexitybot ### Google-Extended Google-Extended is a robots.txt token controlling whether your content may be used to train Google's Gemini models. It is not a crawler and does not affect Google Search rankings or appearance in AI Overviews. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#google-extended ## The plumbing ### robots.txt robots.txt is a small text file at the root of a website that tells crawlers which parts of the site they may read. Rules target crawlers by name, so training and retrieval crawlers can be treated differently. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#robots-txt ### llms.txt llms.txt is a proposed convention: a plain-text file at the root of a website giving AI systems a curated summary of the site and links to its most useful pages. It is not an official standard. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#llms-txt ### Structured data Structured data is machine-readable code added to a web page that states facts plainly, such as business type, address, opening hours and services. It is usually written in the JSON-LD format using schema.org vocabulary. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#structured-data ### JSON-LD JSON-LD is the format Google recommends for writing structured data: a block of JavaScript Object Notation placed in a script tag, separate from the visible page content, which makes it easier to add and maintain. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#json-ld ### schema.org schema.org is the shared vocabulary used in structured data, maintained by a community project founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex. It defines types like LocalBusiness, Product and FAQPage and the properties each can carry. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#schema-org ### Entity An entity is a distinct thing a machine can identify: a business, person, place or product. Search and AI systems try to resolve mentions across the web to the same entity, so consistent details make a business easier to recommend. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#entity ### Knowledge graph A knowledge graph is a database of entities and the relationships between them, such as Google's Knowledge Graph. When a system is confident about who you are and what you do, those facts can be served directly into answers. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#knowledge-graph ### sameAs sameAs is a schema.org property that lists other web pages referring to the same entity, typically your Google Business Profile, social profiles and directory listings. It helps machines connect scattered presences into one identity. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#sameas ## The measurements ### Grounding Grounding is the process of tying an AI answer to real, checkable sources rather than the model's memory alone. A grounded answer is composed from retrieved documents and usually cites them. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#grounding ### Citation A citation is a visible reference in an AI answer pointing to the source of a claim, usually a link. Citations are the clearest evidence that a system read and used your page. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#citation ### Zero-click search A zero-click search ends without the searcher visiting any website, because the answer appeared on the results page or in the chat itself. AI answers push more searches toward zero clicks, so traffic understates real presence. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#zero-click-search ### Share of voice Share of voice, in AI visibility, is the percentage of relevant AI answers that name your business rather than a competitor, measured by asking assistants a set of customer questions repeatedly and recording who gets named. Anchor: https://answerable.com.au/ai-visibility-glossary/#share-of-voice --- ## Where to start If a definition here raised a question rather than answering one, the plain-English explainers cover the same ground at length: - [What is AI visibility?](https://answerable.com.au/what-is-ai-visibility/) - [How to get recommended by ChatGPT](https://answerable.com.au/how-to-get-recommended-by-chatgpt/) - [How to show up in Google AI answers](https://answerable.com.au/how-to-show-up-in-google-ai-answers/) - [GEO vs SEO](https://answerable.com.au/geo-vs-seo/) - [AEO vs SEO vs GEO](https://answerable.com.au/aeo-seo-geo/) - [The State of AI Visibility in Australia 2026](https://answerable.com.au/state-of-ai-visibility-australia-2026/), the original research behind the numbers Answerable quotes Contact: hello@answerable.com.au. Melbourne, Australia.