The AI visibility glossary

AI visibility is how often and how prominently AI engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI name your brand when people ask questions in your category. It is the AI search counterpart to SEO visibility, and a brand can rank well in Google while being missing from AI answers. What is AI visibility?

An AI visibility platform is software that asks AI engines the questions a business's buyers ask, records whether the brand is mentioned and recommended, tracks it over time and benchmarks competitors. ONEGO is an AI visibility platform. Best AI visibility platforms

An AI visibility checker is a tool that runs a one off check of whether AI engines mention your brand for a set of buyer questions, usually returning a score and the competitors named instead. A checker gives a snapshot; a platform tracks the same questions over time. Free AI visibility checker

Generative Engine Optimization is the practice of improving how often and how favourably generative AI engines mention, recommend and cite a brand. It works through clear content, consistent facts, crawler access and genuine mentions on the third party sites AI engines read. What is GEO

Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring content so answer engines can extract and quote it directly, using question headings, concise standalone answers, structured data and clear entity information. AEO focuses on being the quoted answer; GEO focuses on being the recommended brand. What is AEO

LLM SEO is an informal name for optimising a brand's presence in answers from large language model products such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. It overlaps almost entirely with GEO and AEO, and is built on the same SEO foundations. GEO vs SEO

An answer engine is a search product that replies to a question with a written answer, often with cited sources, instead of a list of links. Perplexity, ChatGPT search and Google AI Mode are examples.

A large language model is an AI model trained on very large amounts of text to understand and generate language. LLMs power ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and the AI features in search engines.

A zero click search is one where the user gets what they need from the results page or AI answer and does not click through to any website. AI answers increase zero click searches, which is why being named inside the answer matters.

An AI visibility score combines several AI visibility measures, such as mention rate and position, into one number so a brand can track progress. Every vendor calculates it differently, so scores are not comparable between tools. How to measure AI visibility

The ONE Score is ONEGO's measure of AI visibility from 0 to 100, reflecting whether AI engines recommend a brand across the questions its buyers ask, weighted by how often and how prominently it appears. As a guide, 67 and above is strong, 34 to 66 is partial and 33 or below is weak. The ONE Score explained

Mention rate is the share of tracked buyer questions for which an AI engine names your brand at all. It is the foundation of AI visibility: if you are not mentioned, nothing else counts.

Answer position is where your brand appears inside an AI answer, for example named first, in a short list, or below competitors. Being named first is worth far more than being the fifth name in a list.

AI share of voice is how often your brand is named in AI answers compared with your competitors, across the same set of questions. It shows whether you are gaining or losing ground in your category.

Sentiment in AI visibility is how positively, neutrally or negatively an AI engine describes your brand. It also covers whether the facts the engine states about you are correct.

An AI citation is a link or reference to a web page that an AI engine shows as a source for its answer. Being cited means the engine used your page; being recommended means it named your brand. They are tracked separately.

A brand mention is any time your brand name appears, linked or not, in an AI answer or on a third party web page. Consistent mentions on trusted sites are one of the strongest signals AI engines use to decide which brands to recommend.

AI referral traffic is visits to your website that come from AI products, such as clicks from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai or gemini.google.com. You can segment it in analytics by referrer, though many AI influenced buyers arrive later by typing your name.

Google AI Overviews are AI generated summaries that appear at the top of some Google search results, with links to the pages they draw on. Google says there are no special requirements to appear beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet. Google AI Overviews checker

Google AI Mode is a conversational search experience inside Google Search for longer, more complex questions, answered with AI and linked sources. Like AI Overviews it draws on Google's index. Google AI Overviews and AI Mode checker

Query fan out is a technique Google describes for AI Mode and AI Overviews in which the system runs several related searches across subtopics to build one answer. Pages that cover the follow up questions around a topic get more chances to be used.

ChatGPT search is the feature that lets ChatGPT look up current web pages and cite them in its answer. It relies on OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot crawler and on third party search providers. ChatGPT visibility checker

Grounding is when an AI model bases its answer on information retrieved at the time of the question, such as search results, rather than only on what it learned in training. Grounded answers can change as soon as the web changes.

Retrieval augmented generation is a method where an AI system first retrieves relevant documents, then writes its answer from them. Most AI search products use a form of it, which is why being in the retrieved sources matters.

A knowledge cutoff is the date after which a model has no training data. Answers that do not use search reflect what was written about you before that date.

A hallucination is a confident AI answer that is false, such as a wrong price, feature or location for your business. Clear, consistent facts on your own site and listings reduce them.

An AI crawler is a bot that fetches web pages for an AI company, either to build a search index for AI answers or to collect training data. Blocking search crawlers can keep you out of AI answers; blocking training crawlers does not. Free AI crawler checker

OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's crawler that indexes pages for ChatGPT search. OpenAI says sites that opt out of it are not shown in ChatGPT search answers. ChatGPT visibility checker

GPTBot is OpenAI's crawler that collects content that may be used to train its models. It is controlled separately from OAI-SearchBot, so blocking GPTBot does not remove you from ChatGPT search.

PerplexityBot is Perplexity's crawler that indexes pages so Perplexity can show and cite them in answers. Perplexity-User is a separate agent that fetches pages live for a user's question. Perplexity visibility checker

Google-Extended is a robots.txt product token that controls whether Google may use your content for Gemini apps grounding and Gemini model training. Google states it does not affect inclusion or ranking in Google Search, including AI Overviews. Gemini visibility checker

robots.txt is a text file at the root of a website that tells crawlers which paths they may or may not fetch. It is the main way to allow or block AI crawlers.

llms.txt is a proposed standard: a Markdown file at the root of a website that gives AI systems a clean summary of the site and links to its key pages. It is optional and not an official ranking factor, but it is cheap to add.

Structured data is code, usually JSON-LD using the schema.org vocabulary, that describes a page's content in a machine readable way, such as an organisation, product, FAQ or article. It helps search engines and AI systems understand who you are and what a page says.

An entity is a distinct, identifiable thing, such as a company, person or product, that search engines and AI systems recognise and describe. A clear, consistent entity, with the same name, category and facts everywhere, is easier for AI engines to recommend.

sameAs is a schema.org property that links your website's Organization data to your official profiles elsewhere, such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Wikidata. It helps engines confirm that those profiles all describe the same entity.

IndexNow is a protocol that lets a website notify participating search engines, including Bing, the moment a page is added or updated. Faster indexing in Bing helps new pages reach the AI products that draw on it.