/dictionary

The GEO dictionary

15 terms from the generative web, defined in plain language and kept current as the field moves.

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A
AEOnoun

Answer Engine Optimization. The earlier name for the discipline, coined when featured snippets were the prize.

Agentnoun

Software that browses, compares, and buys on behalf of a user. Increasingly holds the credit card.

AI crawlernoun

A bot that fetches pages for model training or live answers. Identified by its user agent, verified by its IP range.

C
Citationnoun

A source an answer engine names in its response. The unit of visibility on the generative web.

Crawl budgetnoun

How many of your pages a bot fetches per visit. Smaller than you think, and AI crawlers spend it differently.

E
Entitynoun

A thing a model can identify across sources: a brand, a person, a product. Consistency is what makes you one.

G
GEOnoun

Generative Engine Optimization. Shaping content, structure, and reputation so answer engines retrieve it, trust it, and cite it. The reason this site exists.

See the full entry
Groundingnoun

Connecting model output to retrieved documents so the answer quotes the web instead of inventing it.

H
Hallucinationnoun

A confident model statement with no source behind it. What grounding, and your quotable pages, exist to prevent.

L
llms.txtnoun

A curated, annotated index of your site written for language models. Not a sitemap, despite appearances.

R
Retrievalnoun

The step where an engine fetches candidate sources before writing an answer. Where GEO is won or lost.

S
SEOnoun

Search Engine Optimization. The parent discipline, built for ranked links and clicks on a result page.

Share of answersnoun

Of the times an engine answered a question in your category, how often you were a cited source. The metric that replaces rank.

Structured datanoun

Schema.org markup that makes your quotable parts machine-liftable. Four types survive retrieval; the rest is stripped.

V
Visibility indexnoun

A composite of an engine’s reach and citation rate. How this site scores where showing up matters most.