GEO & AEO Glossary

Plain-English definitions for the AI-readiness, generative engine optimization, and AI Visibility terms in your report. Know what the scanner measures, and what each score is telling you to do next.

Core Concepts

GEO: Generative Engine Optimization — the practice of optimizing content so it surfaces in AI-generated answers. Always uppercase. It is the dominant market term among SEO practitioners.
AEO: Answer Engine Optimization — structuring content so it can be lifted directly as an answer in AI-generated responses. It complements GEO: GEO covers technical access and extractability, while AEO covers how an answer is formatted and structured.
AI-readiness: How well a website's technical setup allows AI systems to access, understand, and use its content. Always hyphenated.
AI Visibility: Whether AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude know a website and recommend it when users ask relevant questions. Written as two capitalized words, no hyphen.
AI-Readiness score: Numeric rating from 0 to 100 measuring a website's technical AI-readiness. Capital R when used as a product feature name.

Scanning & Reports

Scan: The action of analyzing a website against all AI-readiness parameters and computing scores. Used as both a verb and a noun.
Report: Complete analysis output containing scores, parameter results, evidence, and recommendations.
Parameter: A single aspect of AI-readiness that the scanner evaluates — robots.txt access or structured-data quality, for example. The friendly4AI scanner measures 48 parameters in total.
Evidence: Concrete, verifiable proof behind a parameter result — the tags that were detected, the fields that were missing, or the actual HTML snippets found during the scan.
Recommendation: Actionable suggestion to improve a specific parameter score, grouped by impact level.

Products & Features

GEO Scanner: The core product. It evaluates websites against GEO and AEO parameters and returns two scores: an AI-Readiness Score and an AI Visibility Score.
AI Bot Accessibility: A report section showing whether a site's robots.txt permits the major AI crawlers. Each result lands in one of four states: all-allowed, mixed, critical, or low-confidence.

Technical Terms

Structured data: Machine-readable markup (Schema.org, JSON-LD) embedded in web pages to help AI systems and search engines understand page content.
robots.txt: A file that tells web crawlers which pages they may access. AI crawlers check it before indexing or training on a site's content.
Sitemap: An XML file listing all pages on a website for crawlers, helping them discover and index content efficiently.
llms.txt: A text file at /llms.txt describing a website's AI-readable content. Google officially stated (2026-05-16) that llms.txt is not used by its generative features. Independent studies find no measurable citation lift. Detected for completeness in friendly4AI reports — not a scored parameter.
Semantic HTML: Using HTML elements for their meaning — headings, lists, articles — rather than for visual styling alone. It helps AI systems parse and understand page structure.
AI crawlers: Bots used by AI companies, classified into three types: training bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot) that collect data for model training, search bots (OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) that power real-time AI search, and agent bots that perform user-requested actions.
OpenAPI: A specification for describing REST APIs. AI agents use OpenAPI definitions to discover and interact with a site's available actions.
Heading hierarchy: Heading elements (H1 through H6) used in correct nesting order. A clear hierarchy helps AI systems understand how a page is organized.
Internal links: Links from one page of a website to another page on the same site. Good internal linking helps AI crawlers discover content and grasp site structure.
Page metadata: HTML meta tags — including title, description, and canonical URL — that describe page content to crawlers and AI systems.
Entity: A named, real-world thing — a person, organization, product, or place — referred to consistently across a website. Consistent mentions help AI systems build accurate knowledge representations.
FAQ schema: A Schema.org markup type (FAQPage + Question + Answer) that tags question-and-answer content in a machine-readable form, so AI systems can lift it as direct answers.
Author authority: Signals that establish the credibility and expertise of a page's author, such as a named author, bio, and links to an authoritative profile.

Engine Clusters & Scoring

Engine cluster: A named group of AI search engines that share a scoring behavior — for example, the "bing" cluster covers Bing and its Copilot syndication partners, and the "google" cluster covers Google Search and AI Overviews. Parameters tagged to a specific cluster carry extra weight in that cluster's sub-score.
Per-cluster sub-score: A weighted score for a single engine cluster (bing, google, perplexity, or claude), built from only the parameters relevant to that cluster. Shown alongside the composite AI-Readiness Score from v4.5 onward.
Advisory check: A parameter outcome where data is unavailable or inconclusive — for example, a Core Web Vitals result when CrUX has no field data, or a bot-reachability probe that times out. The parameter is excluded from the score denominator rather than scored as a fail, so the composite score is unaffected.
IndexNow: An open push protocol — supported by Bing, Yandex, and other search engines — that lets a site notify engines within seconds when a page changes. Faster re-indexing keeps content fresh in AI-powered search results. Google does not participate in IndexNow.
Bot reachability: Whether AI search-bot user-agents (OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) can reach a site at the network layer — that is, they are not blocked by a WAF or CDN before the request reaches the origin. A network block is independent of robots.txt: a bot can be permitted by robots.txt yet still be blocked at the WAF.
Entity grounding: Linking a page's structured data (Organization or Person schema) to authoritative external identity sources — Wikipedia, Wikidata, LinkedIn — through the sameAs property. AI knowledge graphs resolve grounded entities more accurately, which sharpens citation quality in AI-generated answers.
Page experience (Core Web Vitals): A Google ranking signal measuring real-user page performance via three Core Web Vitals: LCP (loading speed), CLS (visual stability), and INP (interaction responsiveness). Measured from Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) field data at the 75th percentile. Google uses page experience signals in AI Overviews ranking.

AI Visibility Metrics

Citation Share: The share of AI-generated answers that mention or link to a specific website, expressed as a percentage of queries in a tracked set. One of the most common outcome metrics used by GEO practitioners and AI-visibility monitoring tools. In your friendly4AI report, your AI Visibility Score reflects this outcome.
Share of Model: An alternative label for Citation Share — the proportion of AI model responses that reference a given domain. Used interchangeably with Citation Share in some research and vendor dashboards. In your friendly4AI report, maps to the AI Visibility Score.
HEO (Holistic Engine Optimization): An umbrella term used by some practitioners to cover both the technical AI-readiness work (GEO/AEO) and the outcome-side visibility measurement (Citation Share). HEO frames optimization as a complete loop: fix technical access → improve AI-Readiness Score → earn more citations → grow AI Visibility. In friendly4AI terms, the technical side maps to the AI-Readiness Score and the outcome side maps to the AI Visibility Score.

GEO & AEO Glossary

Plain-English definitions for the AI-readiness, generative engine optimization, and AI Visibility terms in your report. Know what the scanner measures, and what each score is telling you to do next.

Core Concepts

GEO: Generative Engine Optimization — the practice of optimizing content so it surfaces in AI-generated answers. Always uppercase. It is the dominant market term among SEO practitioners.
AEO: Answer Engine Optimization — structuring content so it can be lifted directly as an answer in AI-generated responses. It complements GEO: GEO covers technical access and extractability, while AEO covers how an answer is formatted and structured.
AI-readiness: How well a website's technical setup allows AI systems to access, understand, and use its content. Always hyphenated.
AI Visibility: Whether AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude know a website and recommend it when users ask relevant questions. Written as two capitalized words, no hyphen.
AI-Readiness score: Numeric rating from 0 to 100 measuring a website's technical AI-readiness. Capital R when used as a product feature name.

Scanning & Reports

Scan: The action of analyzing a website against all AI-readiness parameters and computing scores. Used as both a verb and a noun.
Report: Complete analysis output containing scores, parameter results, evidence, and recommendations.
Parameter: A single aspect of AI-readiness that the scanner evaluates — robots.txt access or structured-data quality, for example. The friendly4AI scanner measures 48 parameters in total.
Evidence: Concrete, verifiable proof behind a parameter result — the tags that were detected, the fields that were missing, or the actual HTML snippets found during the scan.
Recommendation: Actionable suggestion to improve a specific parameter score, grouped by impact level.

Products & Features

GEO Scanner: The core product. It evaluates websites against GEO and AEO parameters and returns two scores: an AI-Readiness Score and an AI Visibility Score.
AI Bot Accessibility: A report section showing whether a site's robots.txt permits the major AI crawlers. Each result lands in one of four states: all-allowed, mixed, critical, or low-confidence.

Technical Terms

Structured data: Machine-readable markup (Schema.org, JSON-LD) embedded in web pages to help AI systems and search engines understand page content.
robots.txt: A file that tells web crawlers which pages they may access. AI crawlers check it before indexing or training on a site's content.
Sitemap: An XML file listing all pages on a website for crawlers, helping them discover and index content efficiently.
llms.txt: A text file at /llms.txt describing a website's AI-readable content. Google officially stated (2026-05-16) that llms.txt is not used by its generative features. Independent studies find no measurable citation lift. Detected for completeness in friendly4AI reports — not a scored parameter.
Semantic HTML: Using HTML elements for their meaning — headings, lists, articles — rather than for visual styling alone. It helps AI systems parse and understand page structure.
AI crawlers: Bots used by AI companies, classified into three types: training bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot) that collect data for model training, search bots (OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) that power real-time AI search, and agent bots that perform user-requested actions.
OpenAPI: A specification for describing REST APIs. AI agents use OpenAPI definitions to discover and interact with a site's available actions.
Heading hierarchy: Heading elements (H1 through H6) used in correct nesting order. A clear hierarchy helps AI systems understand how a page is organized.
Internal links: Links from one page of a website to another page on the same site. Good internal linking helps AI crawlers discover content and grasp site structure.
Page metadata: HTML meta tags — including title, description, and canonical URL — that describe page content to crawlers and AI systems.
Entity: A named, real-world thing — a person, organization, product, or place — referred to consistently across a website. Consistent mentions help AI systems build accurate knowledge representations.
FAQ schema: A Schema.org markup type (FAQPage + Question + Answer) that tags question-and-answer content in a machine-readable form, so AI systems can lift it as direct answers.
Author authority: Signals that establish the credibility and expertise of a page's author, such as a named author, bio, and links to an authoritative profile.

Engine Clusters & Scoring

Engine cluster: A named group of AI search engines that share a scoring behavior — for example, the "bing" cluster covers Bing and its Copilot syndication partners, and the "google" cluster covers Google Search and AI Overviews. Parameters tagged to a specific cluster carry extra weight in that cluster's sub-score.
Per-cluster sub-score: A weighted score for a single engine cluster (bing, google, perplexity, or claude), built from only the parameters relevant to that cluster. Shown alongside the composite AI-Readiness Score from v4.5 onward.
Advisory check: A parameter outcome where data is unavailable or inconclusive — for example, a Core Web Vitals result when CrUX has no field data, or a bot-reachability probe that times out. The parameter is excluded from the score denominator rather than scored as a fail, so the composite score is unaffected.
IndexNow: An open push protocol — supported by Bing, Yandex, and other search engines — that lets a site notify engines within seconds when a page changes. Faster re-indexing keeps content fresh in AI-powered search results. Google does not participate in IndexNow.
Bot reachability: Whether AI search-bot user-agents (OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) can reach a site at the network layer — that is, they are not blocked by a WAF or CDN before the request reaches the origin. A network block is independent of robots.txt: a bot can be permitted by robots.txt yet still be blocked at the WAF.
Entity grounding: Linking a page's structured data (Organization or Person schema) to authoritative external identity sources — Wikipedia, Wikidata, LinkedIn — through the sameAs property. AI knowledge graphs resolve grounded entities more accurately, which sharpens citation quality in AI-generated answers.
Page experience (Core Web Vitals): A Google ranking signal measuring real-user page performance via three Core Web Vitals: LCP (loading speed), CLS (visual stability), and INP (interaction responsiveness). Measured from Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) field data at the 75th percentile. Google uses page experience signals in AI Overviews ranking.

AI Visibility Metrics

Citation Share: The share of AI-generated answers that mention or link to a specific website, expressed as a percentage of queries in a tracked set. One of the most common outcome metrics used by GEO practitioners and AI-visibility monitoring tools. In your friendly4AI report, your AI Visibility Score reflects this outcome.
Share of Model: An alternative label for Citation Share — the proportion of AI model responses that reference a given domain. Used interchangeably with Citation Share in some research and vendor dashboards. In your friendly4AI report, maps to the AI Visibility Score.
HEO (Holistic Engine Optimization): An umbrella term used by some practitioners to cover both the technical AI-readiness work (GEO/AEO) and the outcome-side visibility measurement (Citation Share). HEO frames optimization as a complete loop: fix technical access → improve AI-Readiness Score → earn more citations → grow AI Visibility. In friendly4AI terms, the technical side maps to the AI-Readiness Score and the outcome side maps to the AI Visibility Score.