The GEO glossary
Useful words, carefully bounded.
GEO
Generative engine optimization: a working label for improving how web content can be found, understood and used in AI-mediated answers. Google: AI features and your website
Read the guide: What is GEO?SEO
Search engine optimization: work that helps search engines discover and understand content while improving its usefulness for people. Google: Helpful, people-first content
Read the guide: GEO, SEO and AEOAEO
Answer engine optimization: a term often used for making answers easier to extract or present; its scope varies by speaker. Google: AI features and your website
Read the guide: GEO, SEO and AEOAI search
Search experiences that can combine finding information with generated responses. Not every response necessarily uses a fresh web search. Google: AI features and your website
Read the guide: How AI search finds sourcesCrawling
Fetching resources from the web. A crawler visit alone does not prove indexing or use in an answer. Google: Introduction to robots.txt
Read the guide: Content and technical basicsIndexing
Processing and storing information for search retrieval. An accessible page is not guaranteed to be indexed. Google: AI features and your website
Read the guide: Content and technical basicsRetrieval
Finding candidate information for a query. It is conceptually distinct from composing a response from that information. Google: AI features and your website
Read the guide: How AI search finds sourcesSynthesis
Combining information into a response. The result still needs checking against the sources it represents. Google: AI features and your website
Read the guide: How AI search finds sourcesCitation
A reference shown alongside an answer. Its presence does not establish endorsement, completeness, accuracy or a website visit. Google: AI features and your website
Read the guide: Measuring AI visibilityGrounding
Connecting a generated response to supplied or retrieved material. The term does not itself guarantee factual correctness. Google: AI features and your website
Read the guide: How AI search finds sourcesQuery fan-out
A technique Google says its AI features may use to issue related searches. It is not a universal AI-search pipeline. Google: AI features and your website
Read the guide: How AI search finds sourcesGooglebot
Google’s search crawler. Google identifies its robots.txt directives as the access control for crawling for Search, including AI features. Google: AI features and your website
Read the guide: Search and training crawlersOAI-SearchBot
OpenAI’s crawler for ChatGPT search discovery. Its setting is independent from GPTBot’s training-related control. OpenAI: Overview of crawlers
Read the guide: Search and training crawlersGPTBot
OpenAI’s crawler for content that may be used in training foundation models. It serves a different purpose from OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI: Overview of crawlers
Read the guide: Search and training crawlersrobots.txt
A file communicating crawler access rules. It is neither authentication nor a reliable way to remove a URL from Google’s index. Google: Introduction to robots.txt
Read the guide: Search and training crawlersnoindex
An indexing directive. For Google to see a page’s directive, the crawler needs access to that page. Google: Introduction to robots.txt
Read the guide: Content and technical basicsCanonical URL
A preferred URL for a page. A canonical declaration is a signal, not proof of indexing or selection by an AI system. Google: AI features and your website
Read the guide: Content and technical basicshreflang
Annotations linking equivalent language or regional versions. They do not translate content or guarantee which version Google shows. Google: Localized versions of your pages
Read the guide: Content and technical basicsReferral visit
A visit attributed to a linking source. Available attribution can be incomplete and is different from observing a citation. Google: Get started with Search Console
Read the guide: Measuring AI visibilityBusiness outcome
An action that matters to the site, such as a qualified inquiry. Establishing why it happened requires more evidence than a citation count. Google: Get started with Search Console
Read the guide: Measuring AI visibility