- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of optimizing content so that AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Gemini — cite it when generating answers.
- Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
- Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring content to win direct answers — featured snippets, voice results and AI answers — by answering specific questions concisely and clearly.
- Google AI Overviews
- Google AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries shown at the top of Google’s search results that answer a query directly and link to a small set of cited source pages.
- llms.txt
- llms.txt is a proposed plain-text standard file, placed at a site’s root, that gives AI engines a curated, machine-readable index of a site’s most important content.
- E-E-A-T
- E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is the framework Google’s quality raters use to judge content quality and source reliability — now a key signal for AI citations too.
- Entity SEO
- Entity SEO is the practice of optimizing for the people, places, products and concepts (entities) that search engines and AI models understand and connect, rather than for keyword strings alone.
- Topical authority
- Topical authority is the degree to which a site is treated as a comprehensive, trusted source for an entire topic — earned through complete coverage and tight internal linking, not isolated keywords.
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