Glossary
AI marketing terms in plain English
Short, accurate definitions of the words you will hear when people talk about SEO and AI search.
24 terms
Glossary of AI marketing terms
Letters covered: A, B, C, E, G, I, L, N, R, S, T
- AEO (answer engine optimization)
- Optimizing content so it is selected as the direct answer to a question in featured snippets, voice assistants and AI answers.
- AI Mode
- Google's conversational search experience that answers complex questions with AI and links to supporting pages.
- AI Overviews
- AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of some Google search results, with links to source pages.
- AI visibility
- How often and how accurately a brand is mentioned, cited or recommended in AI-generated answers.
- Brand mention
- A reference to a brand on another website, with or without a link. Mentions correlate strongly with AI visibility.
- Canonical URL
- The preferred address of a page, declared so search engines know which version to index.
- Citation (AI)
- A link or reference to a source that an AI system shows alongside its answer.
- Citation (local)
- A listing of a business's name, address and phone number on a directory or website.
- Core Web Vitals
- Google's page experience measures: loading (LCP), responsiveness (INP) and visual stability (CLS).
- Crawler
- A program that visits web pages so a search engine or AI system can read and index them.
- E-E-A-T
- Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness: the qualities Google's quality guidelines look for in content.
- Entity
- A distinct thing, such as a business, person or place, that search engines and AI systems can identify and connect facts to.
- GEO (generative engine optimization)
- Making a brand easy for generative AI systems to understand, trust and cite.
- Google Business Profile
- The free Google listing that controls how a business appears in Google Maps and local results.
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint)
- A Core Web Vital that measures how quickly a page responds when a visitor interacts with it.
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)
- A Core Web Vital that measures how long the main content of a page takes to appear.
- LLM (large language model)
- The type of AI model behind assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.
- llms.txt
- A proposed plain-text file that summarises a site for language models. Studies so far show no effect on AI citations.
- Local pack
- The group of map listings shown for local searches, also called the Map Pack.
- NAP
- Name, address and phone number. Keeping these identical everywhere helps local search and AI systems trust the business.
- robots.txt
- A file that tells crawlers which parts of a site they may visit, including AI search bots.
- Schema markup
- Structured data, usually JSON-LD, that describes a page's content to machines in a standard vocabulary.
- Search intent
- The goal behind a search, such as learning, comparing or buying.
- Topic cluster
- A group of linked pages that cover one subject in depth around a central pillar page.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Who writes these definitions?
They are written and reviewed by Dr. Abaid Ahmad, founder of Summit Digital Marketing, and updated as terminology changes.
Can I suggest a term?
Yes. Email abaidgolden@gmail.com and we will consider adding it.
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