AI visibility glossary

The language around getting recommended by AI — GEO, answer engines, AI Overviews, share of voice — is new and often used loosely. This glossary defines the terms plainly, in the context that matters for a home-services business: whether ChatGPT or Perplexity names you when a homeowner asks who to call.

It’s the companion to our guide on how to get recommended by AI. The guide walks through what to do; this page defines the words you’ll meet along the way. Every definition is honest and useful on its own — no hype, no invented numbers.

New here? Read the guide: how to get recommended by AI

AI visibility: Whether AI assistants name your business when someone asks them for a recommendation — for example, "who’s the best HVAC company in Austin?". You’re AI-visible if the assistant lists you; invisible if it names competitors instead. It’s the AI-era counterpart to ranking in Google’s local results.
Answer engine: A system that answers a question directly in prose instead of returning a page of links — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini. For local services it replies with a short list of specific business names, which is why being one of those names matters.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): The practice of improving whether and how a generative AI answer cites or recommends you. For local trades it overlaps almost entirely with local SEO: the reviews, structured data, and consistent listings that win Google’s map pack are the same signals answer engines rely on.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): A near-synonym for GEO, emphasising optimisation for answer engines specifically. The distinction is mostly branding — both describe getting recommended inside AI-generated answers rather than in a list of blue links.
AI Overviews: Google’s AI-generated summary shown above the classic results for many searches, including some local ones. It synthesises an answer — sometimes naming businesses — from the open web and Google’s own data. Cited never scrapes AI Overviews; we measure visibility only through official APIs.
Large language model (LLM): The AI model behind an assistant, trained on large amounts of text to predict and generate language. On its own an LLM answers from training data, which can be stale; for current local recommendations it’s usually paired with live web search (see RAG).
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG): When an assistant fetches live sources — search results, business listings, reviews — and writes its answer from them, rather than from memory alone. It’s why a readable, well-listed web presence matters: RAG can only cite what it can retrieve and parse.
Grounding and citations: Grounding is tying an answer to real sources; a citation is the link or reference the assistant shows for a claim. Being the grounded, cited source for "best plumber near me" is the goal — it’s the difference between being mentioned in passing and being the recommendation.
Cited, mentioned, or absent: The three states a Cited audit reports for your business on a given question. Cited: named as a recommendation, ideally with a link. Mentioned: your name appears but not as a top pick. Absent: not named at all — the assistant recommends someone else.
Share of voice: How often you’re named versus your competitors across the set of buying-intent questions an audit runs. A low share of voice means the assistant consistently reaches for other businesses first — the gap a fix list is meant to close.
Buying-intent query: A question asked by someone close to hiring — "who should I call to replace my water heater in Denver?" — as opposed to research like "how does a water heater work". These are the highest-value prompts to be recommended on, and the ones Cited’s audits sample.
Local pack (map pack): Google’s block of three local businesses with a map, shown for "near me" and city searches. It’s driven by Google Business Profiles, reviews, and proximity — the same signals that feed AI recommendations, so improving one tends to improve the other.
Google Business Profile (GBP): Your free business listing on Google (formerly Google My Business) — categories, service area, hours, photos, and reviews. It’s the single most influential source for local AI answers, so a complete, active profile is the highest-leverage fix for most contractors.
NAP consistency: Having the same Name, Address, and Phone number everywhere your business appears online. Conflicting details make an engine hedge about which listing is really you — and a hedging assistant names a competitor it’s more confident about instead.
Structured data (schema.org): Machine-readable markup added to your web pages — LocalBusiness, FAQPage, and similar — that states plainly what you do, where, and what people ask you. It helps both classic search engines and AI crawlers parse you correctly, and it’s one of the cheapest high-leverage fixes.
E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust — the qualities Google’s guidelines say signal a credible source. The same qualities make answer engines comfortable recommending you: real reviews, clear ownership and credentials, and corroboration across the sites they trust.
llms.txt: An emerging convention (llmstxt.org): a plain-text file at a site’s root that gives AI crawlers a clean, machine-readable index of its pages. It’s a way to make a site easy for assistants to read and cite — Cited publishes one, dogfooding the thesis.
AI crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended): The automated bots that read the open web on behalf of answer engines so they can cite it — OpenAI’s OAI-SearchBot, Perplexity’s PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended among them. Allowing them in your robots.txt is what lets your content show up in AI answers.

Run your free audit

Enable JavaScript to request your audit in one click, or email us and we’ll run it by hand.

The exact questions we’ll ask AI about you:

“Who are the best HVAC companies in my city?”
“Which plumber should I call when a pipe bursts?”
“Recommend a trustworthy, well-reviewed roofing company near me.”

Email my free audit request Free. No account. We email one report — no spam.

Frequently asked questions

Is AI visibility the same as SEO?

It overlaps almost entirely. The signals that make an assistant recommend a local business — a complete Google Business Profile, recent reviews, consistent listings, structured data, and clear service-area pages — are the same ones that win Google’s local map pack. It’s best treated as local SEO with answer engines added as a second, higher-intent front door, not a separate discipline.

What’s the difference between GEO and AEO?

Very little. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) both describe getting recommended or cited inside AI-generated answers rather than in a list of links. The terms are used almost interchangeably; the underlying work — earning the trust signals answer engines read — is the same.

How do I check whether AI already recommends my business?

Run a free Cited audit. We ask the real buying-intent questions your customers ask across official AI APIs (Perplexity and ChatGPT web search — we never scrape Google), then email you a plain-English report: whether you’re cited, mentioned, or absent, who gets recommended instead, and what to fix. Results are sampled and non-deterministic, and we show you every question we asked.