AI search glossary
Short, plain definitions of the words used about search, AI answers and online ads, each with the primary source it rests on. Other pages on this site link here instead of defining terms again.
Every definition on the AI SEO Vancouver glossary is written in our own words and points to the organization that created or documents the term. Where a term is mostly a sales label rather than a standard, the entry says so.
AI citation
An AI citation is a link or source name that an AI tool shows next to its answer to say where the information came from. Being cited is different from being named: an answer can mention a business without linking its site, or link a site without naming the business.
OpenAI Help Center, "Searching the web with ChatGPT" (page carries no date); Google Gemini Apps Help, "View related sources from Gemini Apps" (no date). Both read 2026-10-08. Source.
AI crawler
An AI crawler is an automated program that visits web pages for an AI company, either to train its models, to build an index for its search features, or to fetch a page a user asked about. Most AI companies publish one name per purpose, so a site can allow one use and refuse another in robots.txt.
OpenAI, "Overview of OpenAI Crawlers" (page carries no date); Anthropic, "Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?" (no date); Perplexity, "Perplexity Crawlers" (no date). All read 2026-10-08. Source.
AI Mode
AI Mode is a tab in Google Search where a person asks a longer question and gets an AI-written answer with links, then can keep asking follow-up questions. Google says it breaks a question into smaller topics and looks each one up at once. It is available in Canada.
Google Search Help, "Get AI-powered responses with AI Mode in Google Search" (page carries no date), read 2026-10-08. Source.
AI Overviews
AI Overviews are brief AI-written summaries placed above some Google results, each linking to pages it drew from. Google shows one only when it judges it adds something to the normal results, so many searches have none.
Google Search Central, "AI features and your website", last updated 2025-12-10, read 2026-10-08. Source.
Answer engine optimization (AEO)
Answer engine optimization (AEO) covers the work of improving how a business is described, and whether it's named, when a person puts a question to an AI tool rather than reading a list of links. Google treats AEO and GEO as part of ordinary SEO.
Answer engine optimization, in full.
Google Search Central, "Google's Guide to Optimizing for Generative AI Features on Google Search", last updated 2026-07-10, read 2026-10-08. Source.
Conversion tracking
Conversion tracking is the setup that counts the actions an advertiser decides are valuable, such as a purchase, a sign-up or a phone call, so each ad and keyword can be judged on results rather than clicks alone. In Google Ads the advertiser chooses what counts as a conversion.
Google Ads Help, "About conversion measurement" (page carries no date), read 2026-10-27. Source.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals: the three measures Google uses for how a page feels to real visitors: how fast the main content loads, how quickly the page responds to a tap or click, and how much the layout jumps while loading. Google publishes a target for each and says good scores help, but don't by themselves put a page at the top.
Google Search Central, "Understanding Core Web Vitals and Google search results", last updated 2025-12-10, read 2026-10-09. Source.
Digital PR
Digital PR is public relations aimed at online publications: offering editors and writers a story, data or expert comment worth covering, so they mention and link to a business on their own terms. Paid placements are advertising, not digital PR, and Google asks that links in them be marked as sponsored.
Google Search Central, "Qualify your outbound links to Google", last updated 2025-12-10, and "Spam policies for Google web search", last updated 2026-08-28. Both read 2026-10-09. Source.
E-E-A-T
Google uses the label E-E-A-T for four qualities its systems look for in helpful content: first-hand experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness. Google says trust matters most of the four, and that E-E-A-T on its own isn't a ranking factor.
Google Search Central, "Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content", last updated 2026-10-05, read 2026-10-08. Source.
Entity
In search, an entity is a single real thing, such as a business, person or place, that a search engine recognizes as distinct from everything else with a similar name. Google keeps these in its Knowledge Graph and describes them with schema.org types.
Google for Developers, "Knowledge Graph Search API", last updated 2024-04-26, read 2026-10-08. Source.
Generative engine optimization (GEO)
Generative engine optimization (GEO) means shaping a website's content so AI systems that write answers, such as ChatGPT or Google's AI Overviews, are more likely to use it and credit it. The name comes from a 2023 research paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and five co-authors. In practice it is another name for answer engine optimization.
Answer engine optimization, in full.
Aggarwal et al., "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization", arXiv 2311.09735, first submitted 2023-11-16, revised 2024-06-28 (KDD 2024). Read 2026-10-08. Source.
Google Ads
Google Ads is Google's advertising platform. Advertisers bid in an auction each time a search could show an ad, and Google ranks eligible ads by Ad Rank, which weighs the bid together with ad quality and what the person searched for. Money spent there doesn't change unpaid results.
Google Ads Help, "Ad auction" and "About measuring paid and organic search results" (pages carry no date), read 2026-10-09. Source.
Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is the no-cost Google listing that shows a business's name, category, hours, location or service area, photos and reviews on Search and Maps. Google builds it from what the owner enters, the business's website, licensed data and contributions from users.
How a Business Profile shapes AI answers.
Google Business Profile Help, "Understand how Google sources & uses info in Business Profiles & local search results" (page carries no date), read 2026-10-08. Source.
Google-Extended
Google-Extended is a name a site can use in robots.txt to stop Google using its pages to train Gemini models and to ground answers in the Gemini apps. Google says blocking it makes no difference to whether a site shows in Google Search, or to where it ranks.
Google Search Central, "Google's common crawlers", last updated 2026-10-15, read 2026-10-27. Source.
JSON-LD
JSON-LD is a way of writing structured data as a small script block in a page's code, kept apart from the text visitors read. Google supports several formats and recommends JSON-LD where a site's setup allows it, because it is the easiest to maintain at scale.
Local business schema, in full.
Google Search Central, "Introduction to structured data markup in Google Search", last updated 2025-12-10, read 2026-10-27. Source.
llms.txt
An llms.txt file follows a suggested format: a Markdown text file, usually kept in a site's top folder, that hands AI tools a brief overview of the site plus links to its key pages. It is a community proposal, not a web standard. Google says its Search ignores these files, so one neither helps nor hurts a site there.
llmstxt.org, "The /llms.txt file, v2", published 2024-09-03, last modified 2026-08-10. Google Search Central, "Google's Guide to Optimizing for Generative AI Features on Google Search", last updated 2026-07-10. Both read 2026-10-27. Source. Read the guide: Do you need llms.txt?
Local SEO
Local SEO is the part of search engine optimization aimed at nearby customers, in Maps and in the local results within Search. Google says three things mainly decide those results: how relevant a business is, how far away it is and how well known it is. It adds that a better local position can't be bought.
Google Business Profile Help, "Tips to improve your local ranking on Google" (page carries no date), read 2026-10-09. Source.
Meta Ads
Meta Ads are paid ads that run in Facebook, Instagram and Meta's other apps, still often called Facebook ads. Meta runs an auction for each chance to show an ad and picks the one worth the most overall, combining the bid, how likely the person is to respond and ad quality.
Meta Business Help Centre, "About ad auctions" (page carries no date), read 2026-10-09. Source.
NAP consistency
NAP consistency means the business name, address and phone read identically wherever they appear: the website, the Business Profile, directory listings and the structured data. NAP is industry shorthand rather than a Google term, but Google asks that a profile name match the name the business uses in the real world.
Google Business Profile Help, "Guidelines for representing your business on Google" (page carries no date), read 2026-10-08. Source.
PPC (pay-per-click)
PPC, short for pay-per-click, is advertising where the advertiser pays when someone clicks the ad. In Google Ads the advertiser sets a maximum cost per click and a daily budget, and the auction decides the actual price. It is a paid channel, separate from organic search.
Google Ads Help, "Choose your bid and budget" (page carries no date), read 2026-10-09. Source.
Query fan-out
Query fan-out is when an AI search feature turns one question into several related searches, runs them together, and builds its answer from all the results. It means a page can be used for a question whose exact words it never contains.
Google Search Central, "Google's Guide to Optimizing for Generative AI Features on Google Search", last updated 2026-07-10, read 2026-10-08. Source.
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
Retrieval-augmented generation is a method where an AI model looks up relevant documents first and then writes its answer from them, instead of relying only on what it learned in training. Google says its AI features work this way using its Search index, and calls the same idea grounding.
Google Search Central, "Google's Guide to Optimizing for Generative AI Features on Google Search", last updated 2026-07-10, read 2026-10-08. Source.
robots.txt
robots.txt is a short text file kept in a website's top folder that tells crawlers which parts of the site they may visit. It is an internet standard (RFC 9309). It controls crawling, not indexing: Google says it doesn't keep a page out of its results.
IETF, RFC 9309 "Robots Exclusion Protocol", September 2022. Google Search Central, "Introduction to robots.txt", last updated 2025-12-10. Both read 2026-10-08. Source.
Schema.org
Schema.org is the shared vocabulary of types and properties, such as LocalBusiness, openingHours or Service, used to write structured data. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex founded it, and it is developed in the open through a W3C community group.
Schema.org, "About Schema.org" (page carries no date), read 2026-10-08. Source.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) means improving a website so search engines find, understand and show its pages to the right people, and so those people choose to visit. Google says nobody can guarantee a top position and that nothing secret ranks a site first. Answer engine optimization builds on it.
Google Search Central, "SEO Starter Guide", last updated 2025-12-10, and "Do you need an SEO?", last updated 2026-06-05. Both read 2026-10-09. Source.
Structured data
Structured data is markup placed in a page's code, most often in JSON-LD, labelling facts like a business's name, type and hours so machines can read them without guessing. Google uses it for rich results and says its AI features don't require it.
Local business schema, and what it won't do.
Google Search Central, "Introduction to structured data markup in Google Search", last updated 2025-12-10, read 2026-10-08. Source.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the part of search engine optimization that makes sure Google and other engines can fetch, render and index a site's pages, and that those pages load well. Google describes crawling and indexing as stages a page must pass before it can appear in results.
Google Search Central, "In-depth guide to how Google Search works", last updated 2025-12-18, read 2026-10-09. Source.
See it on your business
A free snapshot puts these terms to work: what AI tools say about your business today, and which sources they cite.
Last reviewed 27 October 2026