Glossary
Definitions collected from indexwire's published articles. Each term is defined by the article that introduced it, and links back to every article that uses it.
- AI citation
- When an AI assistant attributes a claim in its answer to a specific source. A citation is stronger than a bare mention: it points somewhere.What is GEO? Generative engine optimization, defined
- AI visibility
- How often and how prominently a brand is recommended in AI-generated answers to relevant questions, measured across a fixed prompt set.Introducing the index: free, open AI-visibility leaderboards
- Answer Engine Optimization
- The practice of structuring content so an AI assistant selects and cites it as a source when answering a question. A narrower slice of GEO focused on the retrieval-and-citation layer.What is AEO? Answer engine optimization, defined
- Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
- The slice of GEO focused on the retrieval-and-citation layer: getting a page selected and cited when an assistant needs a source for a specific fact or recommendation.What is GEO? Generative engine optimization, defined
- citation
- A mention an assistant backs with a link or attributable source. A citation is not a mention: a brand can be recommended with nothing to point at.The open methodology: how indexwire scores AI visibility Introducing the index: free, open AI-visibility leaderboards
- citation rate
- How often a piece of content is selected and attributed as a source in AI-generated answers. The primary AEO success metric, and a leading indicator rather than a traffic number.What is AEO? Answer engine optimization, defined
- entity consistency
- Naming a brand or topic the same way across a site and the wider web so AI systems resolve it as one recognizable entity. Plausibly helpful, but not rigorously established.What is AEO? Answer engine optimization, defined
- extractable answer
- A self-contained statement that can be pulled from a page and attributed without its surrounding context. Assistants favor content structured this way.What is AEO? Answer engine optimization, defined
- extractable paragraph
- A self-contained paragraph that can be pulled from a page and attributed without its surrounding context. Assistants favor content structured this way.What is GEO? Generative engine optimization, defined
- Generative Engine Optimization
- The umbrella term for making content visible across generative AI platforms, including assistants and AI search features. AEO sits inside it.What is AEO? Answer engine optimization, defined
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
- The practice of structuring content so AI assistants cite it as a source in their generated answers, optimizing for citation rather than search ranking.What is GEO? Generative engine optimization, defined
- GEO benchmark
- The 2023 study (arXiv:2311.09735) that named the practice and tested nine content strategies across 10,000 queries, finding citations, statistics, and quotations lifted visibility by up to 40 percent.What is GEO? Generative engine optimization, defined
- mention
- An AI answer that names a brand. Not every mention scores: only recommendation-style mentions carry weight.The open methodology: how indexwire scores AI visibility Introducing the index: free, open AI-visibility leaderboards
- open methodology
- Publishing the full measurement method — the prompts, the weights, and the arithmetic — so anyone can reproduce a score and check the work.Introducing the index: free, open AI-visibility leaderboards
- position decay
- The gentle weighting of where a brand appears in an answer: first place 1.0, second about 0.63, third 0.5. Order matters without dominating.The open methodology: how indexwire scores AI visibility
- probe
- A single prompt put to one AI assistant within a run, recorded together with the answer it produced.The open methodology: how indexwire scores AI visibility Introducing the index: free, open AI-visibility leaderboards
- re-fold
- Recomputing scores from the answers already on record under a revised methodology version, rather than probing the assistants again. The observations are the asset; the score is a view over them.The open methodology: how indexwire scores AI visibility
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation
- The process by which an AI assistant finds, ranks, and synthesizes web content when answering, then attributes claims to sources. The mechanism most AEO work targets.What is AEO? Answer engine optimization, defined
- run
- One category scored for one ISO week. The prompt set and the assistant set are frozen when the run starts, so the shape of a week cannot shift underneath it.The open methodology: how indexwire scores AI visibility
- the index
- indexwire's free public leaderboards, one per category, each ranking the brands AI assistants recommend and linking to the method that produced the scores.Introducing the index: free, open AI-visibility leaderboards
- visibility score
- The share, between 0 and 1, of a category's prompts in one week for which assistants recommended a brand. Each answer contributes the brand's single best recommendation mention, and the total is divided by every answer requested.The open methodology: how indexwire scores AI visibility Introducing the index: free, open AI-visibility leaderboards
- zero-click consumption
- When an AI answer satisfies the user's question without a click through to the source. Common in GEO, because content informs the answer directly.What is GEO? Generative engine optimization, defined