Glossary
The language of AI visibility.
Plain-English definitions of the terms used in Generative Engine Optimisation and Answer Engine Optimisation. Each definition is written to stand alone, because that is how answer engines - and busy people - read.
- Generative Engine Optimisation GEO
- Generative Engine Optimisation is the practice of improving how often a business is named, and how it is presented, inside AI-generated answers - the responses produced by engines such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Copilot. Where SEO competed for position on a results page, GEO competes for a place inside the answer itself. Full guide: What is GEO?
- Answer Engine Optimisation AEO
- Answer Engine Optimisation is the discipline of optimising content and business identity for answer-focused search, so that when a question is asked, the business is the source the engine quotes. The term overlaps heavily with GEO and the two are often used interchangeably; in practice the work is substantially the same and Answari treats them as one discipline.
- Answer engine
- An answer engine is an AI system that responds to a question with a synthesised answer rather than a list of links. The main answer engines are ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Copilot. Each retrieves sources, weighs which it can trust, and names a small number of businesses or pages in its response - and each weighs signals slightly differently, which is why visibility is measured per engine. Full guide: how answer engines choose sources.
- Answer capsule
- An answer capsule is a short opening answer that states the main point before elaborating. Its length should follow the question and the reader’s needs. Roughly 40-60 words can be an editorial starting point, not a requirement or citation formula. Not every page needs the same structure.
- Entity
- An entity is a person, business, product, service or concept that search and AI systems can confidently recognise as one distinct thing, with consistent facts attached to it. Consistent information helps describe that entity, but it does not establish whether an AI product will recommend it.
- Entity depth
- Entity depth is Answari’s shorthand for the breadth and consistency of verifiable information about a business. We assess public facts, profiles and supporting sources. It is not a standard cross-engine metric, and we cannot inspect how much information a model privately holds or infer that greater depth guarantees recommendation.
- Structured data JSON-LD
- Structured data describes page content and entities in a machine-readable form, often using JSON-LD and schema.org vocabulary. It should reflect the visible facts. It can help describe content and support eligible search features, but does not prove a business is trusted or guarantee a citation. Google requires no special schema for its AI features.
- Organisation & Person schema
- Organisation and Person schema are the structured-data types that declare who a business and its people are: name, location, contact details, credentials, and the relationships between them. Together they form the core of an entity’s machine-readable identity - the version of the business an engine can verify rather than infer.
- FAQPage schema
- FAQPage schema describes question-and-answer content. Any markup should agree with the visible questions and answers and be checked after updates. A useful FAQ can help readers, but markup does not guarantee quotation, citation or eligibility for a particular search appearance.
- sameAs
- sameAs links to a reference page that unambiguously identifies the same entity. Appropriate references may include an official profile or register entry. It should not be used for every page that happens to mention a business, and a sameAs link does not by itself establish trust or an AI recommendation.
- NAP consistency
- NAP means Name, Address and Phone. Relevant profiles should carry accurate details, with legal names and trading styles explained where necessary. Investigate material contradictions. Minor formatting differences alone do not prove that an engine has split the business into entities or stopped recommending it.
- Google Business Profile GBP
- Google Business Profile lets eligible businesses manage information appearing in Google Search and Maps. Accurate location, contact, service and opening details help people check a business. We can review that information, but cannot assign it a verified weight across all AI products.
- AI crawlers GPTBot · ClaudeBot · PerplexityBot
- AI companies use different crawlers and fetchers for search, training and other tasks. Blocking one does not prove that a product cannot mention a business. Google-Extended is a robots.txt control token rather than a separate HTTP crawler identity. We distinguish declared rules, diagnostic requests and verified access evidence in the methodology.
- Branded vs non-branded citations
- A branded prompt includes the business’s name; a non-branded prompt does not. Each can produce a mention, source citation, both or neither. We report the groups separately and mark an untested group as untested. Non-branded test presence is not a count of real people discovering the business.
- E-E-A-T
- E-E-A-T means Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Google describes these as qualities its systems seek through a mix of signals, especially for consequential topics. E-E-A-T is not a single ranking factor or a universal score across AI products. Clear authorship, supportable claims and useful evidence are practical editorial priorities.
- AI Overviews
- AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries within Google Search that can include supporting links. For link eligibility, a page must meet Google’s Search requirements and be indexed with a snippet available. Ordinary SEO foundations remain relevant. Meeting the requirements does not guarantee inclusion.
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Last reviewed: 5 September 2026