The GEO Glossary: Every AI Visibility Term Explained for Marketing Teams

Generative Engine Optimization has developed a rich vocabulary. This glossary defines every term your marketing team needs to know.

AI Visibility Score

A 0-100 score measuring how prominently and accurately a brand appears across AI language models for category-relevant queries. AHOD calculates AI Visibility Score across 9 LLMs using 100+ prompts, measuring mention frequency, position quality, sentiment, cross-platform coverage, and share of voice vs. competitors.

AI Share of Voice (AI SOV)

The percentage of relevant AI category query responses that mention your brand, compared to total brand mentions across all tested queries. Formula: (queries mentioning your brand) / (total queries tested) × 100.

Brand Entity

AI models' structured knowledge profile of your brand — the facts AI has learned about your company including category, founding year, customer type, key differentiators, and credibility signals. A rich entity profile leads to more accurate and frequent AI recommendations.

Category Authority

The degree to which AI models recognize a brand as a definitive expert source in its product or service category. Built through consistent editorial coverage in relevant publications, original research, and expert content.

Citation Rate

The percentage of relevant AI queries that result in your brand being mentioned. Synonym for mention rate.

Entity Consistency

The degree to which your brand description, founding year, customer type, and other facts are identical across all web sources AI retrieves. Inconsistency creates a confused entity profile that reduces recommendation probability.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

The practice of building a brand's editorial authority, entity data, and content ecosystem so that AI language models select it as a trusted recommendation source for relevant queries. The AI-era equivalent of SEO.

Domain Authority (DA)

A proprietary Moz metric (0-100) estimating a domain's search ranking potential, primarily based on backlink quality. Used as a proxy for editorial publication weight — DA70+ publications are typically Google News indexed and AI training data sources.

Domain Rating (DR)

Ahrefs' equivalent metric to Moz's DA. Both DA and DR are used to evaluate publication authority for AI visibility purposes.

E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)

Google's quality framework for evaluating content. AI models apply similar signals: named experts with verifiable credentials, cited sources, accurate claims, and transparent authorship all improve AI citation rates.

Editorial Authority

The credibility and trust AI models assign to content from a specific publication. DA70+ publications with Google News indexing have the highest editorial authority for AI training data purposes.

Google News Indexing

The inclusion of a publication in Google's News index, meaning its content appears in Google News search and is retrieved by real-time AI systems (Perplexity, ChatGPT Browse, Google AI Overviews) as fresh content.

Tier 1 Publication

DA80+ publications with Google News indexing — authoritative industry sources, authoritative industry sources, authoritative industry sources, Inc., authoritative industry sources. The highest-weight sources for AI training data and real-time retrieval.

LLM (Large Language Model)

The AI systems that power AI assistants: GPT-4o (ChatGPT), Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google), Llama (Meta). Each LLM has distinct training data and retrieval architecture.

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

The architecture where AI models retrieve current web content to supplement their training data when generating responses. Systems like Perplexity and Google AI Overviews are primarily RAG-based.

Training Data

The datasets used to train AI models. High-DA editorial publications are heavily represented in AI training datasets, giving coverage in these publications disproportionate AI visibility weight.

AI Visibility Score

See above.

Mention Frequency

How often your brand appears in AI responses to category-relevant prompts. One of five dimensions of AI Visibility Score.

Position Quality

The ranking position of your brand within AI recommendations — first mention is weighted highest, subsequent mentions progressively less. One of five dimensions of AI Visibility Score.

Sentiment Score

AI's expressed or implied opinion about your brand when it mentions you. Positive sentiment ('highly regarded,' 'market leader') vs. negative sentiment ('has faced criticism,' 'some users report issues').

Prompt Testing

The practice of systematically submitting queries to AI models to test brand visibility. AHOD automates 100+ prompt tests per brand across 9 LLMs monthly.