Answer Engine Optimization is the fastest-moving corner of digital marketing in 2026, and the vocabulary is moving with it. New crawlers, new schemas, new acronyms, new platforms. If you run a local practice and you have started reading about AI search, the language is often the first wall you hit.

This glossary cuts through that. Thirty terms, alphabetical, plain English. If you encounter terms here you want to test against your own AEO visibility, run a free scan and see how your practice currently appears in the four major AI engines.

A

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)

The practice of getting your business cited or recommended by AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. AEO replaces the ten blue links with a single spoken or written answer. For the full primer, see what AEO actually is.

AI Overviews

Google's AI-generated answer block above the traditional ten blue links. Launched broadly in May 2024 under the name SGE and rebranded later that year. For local queries it pulls heavily from Google Business Profile data, review sentiment, and structured data. Deeper guide: what is Google AI Overviews.

C

ChatGPT Search

OpenAI's search-augmented answer mode, launched November 2024. Fetches live web results via the OAI-SearchBot crawler and cites sources inline. See how to optimize for ChatGPT Search.

Citation

When an AI engine explicitly names your business in an answer, often with a link. Citations are the AEO equivalent of a #1 organic ranking and the metric that matters most.

Claude

Anthropic's family of LLMs, with Claude.ai as the consumer chat and a growing role in agentic search via the ClaudeBot crawler. More conservative than ChatGPT about naming specific businesses.

Crawler

An automated bot that fetches and indexes web pages. AI crawlers to allow in robots.txt: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot, Google-Extended.

E

E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Google's framework for evaluating content quality. The highest leverage move is adding real author bios with credentials, real photos, and licensing detail on every service page.

Entity

A person, place, organization, product, or concept that search engines treat as a discrete thing in their knowledge graph. AI engines reason about entities, not keywords.

F

FAQPage Schema

A schema.org structured data type that marks up question-and-answer blocks so AI engines can extract them cleanly. One of the most-cited schemas in ChatGPT and Perplexity responses for local queries.

G

Gemini

Google's flagship AI model family, powering Gemini.com, the Gemini app, and AI Overviews. Draws on Google's search index, Knowledge Graph, and GBP data - making local SEO fundamentals load-bearing for Gemini visibility.

Google Business Profile (GBP)

Google's free local business listing, formerly Google My Business. The single highest-leverage AEO asset for a local practice because Gemini and AI Overviews pull from it directly.

H

Helpful Content Update

A series of Google ranking changes starting August 2022 that down-ranked sites producing content primarily for search engines rather than humans. The same quality bar now applies to AEO.

HowTo Schema

A schema.org type marking up step-by-step instructions. Highest-citation schema on cost-calculator and procedure-explainer pages because AI engines lift the structured steps verbatim.

J

JSON-LD

JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data. The recommended format for structured data on websites, preferred over older Microdata or RDFa. Lives in a script tag in your page head, invisible to humans, readable by every major AI engine.

L

llms.txt

A proposed plain-text file at the root of your domain that tells AI crawlers what your site is, what content is most important, and where to find clean Markdown versions of key pages. Adoption still emerging in 2026 but support growing.

LocalBusiness Schema

The schema.org type identifying your business as a local establishment. For implementation specifics, see structured data for local business.

Local Pack

Google's three-result map block for local-intent queries. AI Overviews now often surface the same three businesses with added AI-generated context.

N

NAP

Name, Address, Phone. The three pieces of business information that must be identical across every directory, social profile, citation, and page of your site. NAP inconsistency is the most common reason a local business gets the wrong phone number cited by AI.

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

The branch of AI that interprets human language. Every modern answer engine runs on NLP, which is why content written in clear, direct sentences outperforms keyword-stuffed prose.

O

Organic Search Result

A non-paid listing on a search engine results page. Still matters in 2026 because AI Overviews and ChatGPT Search both lean on organic source quality when deciding which sites to cite.

P

Perplexity

A standalone answer engine launched in 2022 that combines LLM responses with live web search and inline citations. Responses favor sites with strong FAQPage and Article schema.

Person Schema

A schema.org type marking up an individual professional with credentials, licensing, photo, and bio. One of the strongest E-E-A-T signals an AI engine can read, and under-deployed across most local practice sites.

R

Review Sentiment

The aggregate emotional tone of your reviews across platforms as interpreted by AI engines. Volume and recency matter, but specificity matters more. Reviews naming procedures and outcomes get pulled into AI answers far more often.

Rich Result

A search result enhanced with visual or interactive features pulled from your structured data - star ratings, FAQ accordions, event details. Increases click-through in traditional search and citation probability in AI search.

S

Schema.org

The shared vocabulary search engines and AI engines use to understand structured data. Founded 2011, now defines hundreds of types from LocalBusiness to MedicalProcedure. Complete walk-through: schema markup for AEO.

Search Generative Experience (SGE)

Google's original name for what is now AI Overviews. Launched as a Search Labs experiment in May 2023 and rolled out broadly in May 2024 before being rebranded.

Semantic Search

Search that interprets intent and meaning rather than matching exact keywords. Every modern answer engine is a semantic search system, which is why long, conversational queries now return better results.

Service Schema

A schema.org type describing a specific service with provider, area served, price range. Lets AI engines answer “do they do dental implants” with confidence rather than guessing.

Share of Voice

Your business's share of total citations across a defined set of AI queries, measured against direct competitors. The AEO equivalent of organic visibility tracking.

Structured Data

Code added to your website in standardized format (most commonly JSON-LD) describing page content in machine-readable terms. The single most important technical AEO investment for a local practice.

T

Topic Cluster

A content architecture where one pillar page covers a broad topic in depth and several supporting pages cover narrow subtopics, all interlinked. AI engines reward topic clusters because they signal genuine subject authority.

V

Voice Search

Search queries spoken aloud to a phone, smart speaker, or in-car assistant. Almost always returns a single answer rather than a list - making voice the purest expression of why AEO matters.

Z

Zero-Click Search

A search that resolves without the user clicking through to any website, because the answer appears directly on the search results page or in an AI response. Climbing steadily since AI Overviews launched.

Use the glossary, then test the reality

Vocabulary is the easy part. The hard part is finding out which of these signals your brand is actually sending to the four AI engines that now decide whether you get recommended. A free AEO scan queries ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity with 60 real prompts about your category and geography, scores your citation rate against direct competitors, and returns a prioritized fix plan. No credit card.