AI visibility, explained

AI visibility

How often AI assistants name your business when customers ask for what you do. Not your name: their question. “Best dentist in Park Slope”, not “Smith Dental”.

AI search

Asking an AI assistant instead of typing into Google and clicking links. The answer names a few businesses and the person often stops there.

AI assistant

ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and Copilot. Each one answers the same question differently.

AEO (answer engine optimization)

Making your business the answer an AI gives. Clear pages, complete listings, reviews and mentions it can trust.

GEO (generative engine optimization)

Same goal as AEO, different name. Some agencies use one term, some the other.

AI SEO

The everyday name for AEO and GEO. Regular SEO is about ranking links; AI SEO is about being one of the few names AI says out loud.

Technical GEO

The behind-the-scenes part: structured data, crawler access, sitemaps and fast pages, so AI can read and trust your site.

Google AI Overviews

The AI summary at the top of some regular Google results.

Google AI Mode

Google’s chat-style search. Answers often include a map with businesses.

Copilot

Microsoft’s assistant. Its local answers lean on Bing and Bing Places.

Citation

A source the AI shows under its answer: a directory, an article, your website. Where you get cited is where you get chosen.

Mention rate

Out of many questions, how often you’re named. In our audits we report it out of 100 answers.

Entity

Your business as AI understands it: name, address, phone, services, reviews. If those don’t match across the web, AI gets unsure.

Hallucination

When AI states something wrong as fact: old hours, a wrong price, a closed location.

Structured data (schema)

Hidden labels on your site that tell AI and Google “this is a dentist, here are the hours”.

llms.txt

A short text file on your site that sums up who you are for AI tools. Not required, but helpful.

AI crawlers

The bots AI companies use to read websites. Some site builders can block them by mistake.

Business listings

Google Business Profile, Bing Places and Apple Business Connect. They feed the map cards AI shows.

Questions