AI search, in plain English
The vocabulary of answer engine optimization — defined for people who run stores, not search engineers.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Optimizing so answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI) understand and cite your content.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Making your brand and products show up inside AI-generated answers.
AI Search Visibility
How findable, parseable, and citable your store is to AI search systems.
Answer Engine
A system that answers a question directly instead of returning ten blue links.
AI Overviews
Google's AI-generated summaries that appear above traditional search results.
llms.txt
An emerging file that tells AI crawlers what matters on your site.
AI Shopping Assistant
AI that recommends specific products when shoppers ask what to buy.
Structured Data
Machine-readable markup (JSON-LD) that tells search and AI what your page is about.
Product Schema
Structured data describing a product's name, price, availability, and attributes.
FAQ Schema
Structured data that makes your question-and-answer content machine-readable.
Entity SEO
Helping search and AI recognize your brand as a distinct, trusted entity.
Query Fan-Out
How AI search breaks one question into many sub-queries to assemble an answer.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
How AI answers pull in live, external content — including your store — at answer time.
AI Citation
When an AI answer references or links your store as a source.