The Vocabulary Of Getting Cited By AI
Clear, jargon-free definitions of the terms behind brand mentions, AI citations, and answer-engine visibility. Written for marketers, not engineers.
Core Concepts
Start here. The building blocks of AI visibility.
AI Visibility
How often, and in what context, a brand surfaces when AI assistants answer questions in its category, measured inside the generated answer rather than in a ranking.
AI Citation
A reference to your brand or site inside an AI-generated answer, often shown as a linked source. It’s the clearest signal a model treats you as authoritative.
Brand Mention
Any reference to your brand across the web. Mentions feed the training data and live-retrieval sources AI draws on, shaping visibility even without a link.
Unlinked Mention
A brand reference with no hyperlink. It still carries weight, because models parse entities and context, not links alone.
Answer Engine
Any system that responds with a synthesized answer instead of a list of links, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, or Copilot.
How Visibility Is Measured
The metrics that tell you whether a programme is working.
Citation Share
The percentage of category answers in which your brand is cited, relative to competitors. It’s the core KPI of an AI visibility programme.
Share of Voice (AI)
Your brand’s proportion of total mentions or citations across a defined set of AI queries, measured against named competitors over time.
Sentiment
Whether AI describes your brand positively, neutrally, or negatively. Strong visibility paired with poor sentiment still costs you deals.
Programmatic Query Testing
Running a fixed set of category prompts across AI platforms on a schedule, logging mentions, citations, and sources to track movement reliably.
How AI Decides What To Cite
The signals and mechanics behind AI recommendations.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Structuring content and earning authority so answer engines cite you, extending SEO from ranking pages to being named in AI answers.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
A near-synonym for AEO, emphasising the editorial, entity, and source signals that make a generative model surface your brand.
LLM Visibility
Visibility within large language models specifically, accounting for how each model weights trained-corpus authority versus live retrieval.
Entity SEO
Establishing your brand as a clearly-defined entity so models recognise and trust it as a primary source.
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
A technique where a model retrieves live web sources at answer time and grounds its response in them. Perplexity is always retrieval-augmented.
Training Data versus Retrieval
The two ways a model knows you: its trained corpus, which is durable and authority-driven, and live-retrieved sources, which are recent and freshness-driven. Strong programmes build both.
Source Authority
How much trust a model assigns a publication or domain. High-authority editorial coverage is disproportionately likely to be cited.
See Where You Stand Today
Get a free audit of your current citation position across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude.