Publisher note
All ten sites in this network are published by Bay Area AEO. They cover answer engine optimization in the Bay Area from ten angles and link to one another so readers can move between related topics.
Short definitions, the length a definition should be. Twelve terms have a headword of their own under Definitions, and the arrow after a definition leads to the longer treatment. Anchors are stable: #prompt-panel always resolves to the prompt panel entry.
A
- AEO
- Answer engine optimization: making a business easy for AI assistants to find, understand and recommend, so its name appears in the written answer. Answer engine optimization →
- AI crawler
- The software an AI company uses to fetch web pages, such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot. A site that allows these crawlers can be read and quoted. What are the five AEO signals? →
- AI Mode
- Google's conversational search mode, which answers a question in prose and links the sources it drew on. ChatGPT vs Google AI Overviews →
- AI Overviews
- The AI-written summary Google shows above its regular results for many questions. A local business can be named inside it. ChatGPT vs Google AI Overviews →
- AI visibility audit
- A structured check of what AI assistants say about a business: the customer questions asked, who gets named, how the business is described and which sources are cited. AI visibility audit →
- AIO
- AI optimization: a broad label for making a business easy for AI systems to understand, trust and recommend. AI optimization (AIO) →
- AI SEO
- Artificial intelligence search engine optimization: SEO adapted for AI-powered search, including Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. AI SEO →
- Answer engine
- A system that replies with a written answer instead of a list of links. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews are answer engines. How do AI assistants choose businesses? →
- Answer-ready content
- Service pages, FAQs and structured data written so an AI system has a specific, quotable answer to a customer's question. Answer-ready content →
B
- Bing Places
- Microsoft's business listing service. Its data feeds Bing search and the assistants that rely on Bing, including Copilot. Entity consistency →
- Brand mention
- Any place a business is named on the web, linked or not. AI systems read mentions in local press, guides and directories as evidence. What are the five AEO signals? →
- Business entity
- A business as a distinct thing a machine can identify: one name, one set of locations, one set of services, recognised the same way across sources. Who is Bay Area AEO? →
C
- ChatGPT
- OpenAI's assistant. When it searches the web it composes an answer from the pages it retrieves and can recommend named local businesses. ChatGPT vs Google AI Overviews →
- Citation (AI)
- A source an AI assistant names or links when it composes an answer. Being cited is how a page earns a place in the answer. Listing citation vs AI citation →
- Citation (listing)
- A mention of a business's name, address and phone number on a directory or listing site. Consistent citations help AI resolve the business correctly. Listing citation vs AI citation →
- Claude
- Anthropic's assistant. With web search enabled it reads retrieved pages and can recommend businesses by name. ChatGPT vs Google AI Overviews →
- Copilot
- Microsoft's assistant, which draws heavily on Bing's index and Bing Places data. ChatGPT vs Google AI Overviews →
- Customer question
- The exact wording a real customer types or says to an AI assistant, such as a request for a dentist in San Mateo who takes a named insurance plan. Prompt panel →
E
- Entity consistency
- The state in which a business's name, hours, address, phone and services match on every source AI reads. Entity consistency →
F
- FAQ page
- A page of plain questions and direct answers. Assistants quote these answers when a customer asks the same question. What are the five AEO signals? →
G
- Gemini
- Google's assistant. It draws on Google's index and Google Business Profile data when it names local businesses. ChatGPT vs Google AI Overviews →
- GEO
- Generative engine optimization: the same work as AEO, named for the generative AI engines that write answers instead of listing links. Generative engine optimization →
- Google Business Profile
- The business record Google shows in Maps and local results. Assistants read its categories, hours, attributes and reviews. Entity consistency →
- Grounding
- Tying an AI answer to retrieved sources so the facts in it come from pages the system just read. Grounded answers are where local recommendations come from. How do AI assistants choose businesses? →
J
- JSON-LD
- The structured-data format Google prefers, placed in a script tag. It states a business's facts so machines need not infer them. Structured data →
K
- Knowledge graph
- A database of entities and the relationships between them. Search engines use one to know that a business, its founder and its locations belong together. Who is Bay Area AEO? →
L
- Large language model
- The model behind an AI assistant. It writes the answer; the sources it retrieves decide which businesses the answer can name. LLM SEO →
- Listing
- A business's entry on a platform such as Google, Bing, Apple Maps or Yelp. Entity consistency →
- LLM SEO
- Large language model search engine optimization: optimizing for the models behind AI assistants and the sources they learn from and cite. LLM SEO →
- Local pack
- The map with three businesses that Google shows for local searches. Its data overlaps with what AI assistants read. How does AEO work in the Bay Area? →
M
- Mention rate
- How often a business is named across a fixed set of customer questions and AI platforms. The core number in AEO reporting. Share of answer →
N
- NAP
- Name, address, phone. Rendering them identically everywhere is the base of entity consistency. Entity consistency →
- Neighborhood relevance
- How clearly a business's pages and listings tie it to the neighborhoods customers name in their questions, such as the Mission or Willow Glen. How does AEO work in the Bay Area? →
P
- Perplexity
- An answer engine that searches the web for every question and shows numbered source citations beside its answer. ChatGPT vs Google AI Overviews →
- Prompt
- The question or instruction a person gives an AI assistant. Prompt panel →
- Prompt panel
- The fixed list of real customer questions run across AI platforms each month to track a business's visibility. Prompt panel →
Q
- Query fan-out
- An assistant splitting one question into many smaller searches, checking different sources for each, then combining the results. Query fan-out →
R
- Retrieval-augmented generation
- Fetching documents and having a model compose an answer from them. The architecture behind most AI answers that name local businesses. How do AI assistants choose businesses? →
- Review language
- The words customers use in reviews. When customers describe what a business does best, AI repeats those specifics in its answers. What are the five AEO signals? →
- robots.txt
- The file that tells crawlers which parts of a site they may fetch. Allowing AI crawlers lets assistants read the site. What are the five AEO signals? →
S
- Schema markup
- Structured-data vocabulary from schema.org that tells AI a business's services, service area and hours. Structured data →
- Service area
- The cities and neighborhoods a business serves, stated clearly so an assistant can match it to a local question. How does AEO work in the Bay Area? →
- The portion of AI answers in a prompt panel that name a given business, compared with its competitors. Share of answer →
- Source citation rate
- How often a given page or listing is cited by AI assistants across a prompt panel. Share of answer →
- Structured data
- See schema markup. Structured data →
T
- Third-party mention
- A mention of a business on a site it does not own: local press, guides, directories and associations. AI weighs these as outside confirmation. What are the five AEO signals? →
- Trusted source
- A publication, directory or guide AI assistants regularly cite for a topic or place. What are the five AEO signals? →
V
- Vanity metric
- A number that moves without showing whether customers see the business in AI answers. Impressions and raw traffic are common examples. How is AEO progress measured? →
- Voice assistant
- An assistant such as Siri that answers spoken questions, often from the same listing data the text assistants use. ChatGPT vs Google AI Overviews →
Z
- Zero-click search
- A search answered on the results page or in an AI answer, so the customer chooses a business without visiting a list of websites. AEO vs SEO →
See also
Answer engine optimization · Index of entries · About this dictionary