33 essential terms for AI search optimization, from AEO and GEO to JSON-LD and RAG.
Answer Engine Optimization. The practice of optimizing web content so that AI-powered answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) can find, understand, and cite your content in their responses.
Generative Engine Optimization. A subset of AEO focused specifically on optimizing for generative AI search results, where AI models synthesize answers from multiple sources.
AI Engine Optimization. A broader term encompassing all optimization strategies for AI-driven search and discovery platforms.
Search Engine Optimization. The traditional practice of optimizing web content for search engine rankings. AEO builds on SEO principles for the AI era.
JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data. A structured data format embedded in HTML that helps search engines and AI models understand page content using Schema.org vocabulary.
A collaborative vocabulary for structured data markup. Used with JSON-LD, Microdata, or RDFa to annotate web content with machine-readable information.
A plain-text file placed at a website's root that provides AI language models with a structured summary of the site's content, purpose, and key pages.
FAQPage structured data markup that tells search engines and AI models about question-and-answer content on a page, improving visibility in AI-generated responses.
A protocol created by Facebook that uses meta tags to control how web pages appear when shared on social media and messaging platforms. Also used by AI systems for content understanding.
HTML tags in the <head> section that provide metadata about a page (title, description, robots directives). Essential for both SEO and AEO.
Machine-readable information added to web pages using formats like JSON-LD. Helps AI search engines extract key facts about your content.
OpenAI's web search feature integrated into ChatGPT, which browses the web and cites sources in conversational answers.
An AI-powered answer engine that searches the web and provides cited, conversational answers to user queries.
OpenAI's web crawler (user-agent: GPTBot) that indexes web content for ChatGPT and other OpenAI products.
Anthropic's web crawler that indexes content for Claude AI assistant.
Perplexity AI's web crawler that indexes content for their answer engine.
Google's web crawler that indexes content for Google Search and Google AI Overviews.
A text file at a website's root that tells web crawlers which pages they can or cannot access. Important for controlling AI crawler access.
An XML file that lists all important URLs on a website, helping search engines and AI crawlers discover and index content efficiently.
The preferred URL for a page, specified via <link rel='canonical'>. Prevents duplicate content issues and tells AI crawlers which version of a page to index.
An HTML attribute that specifies the language and geographic targeting of a page. Helps AI search engines serve the correct language version.
Really Simple Syndication. An XML feed format that allows AI systems and aggregators to automatically discover new content on your site.
A protocol that allows websites to instantly notify search engines (Bing, Yandex) when content is created or updated, enabling faster indexing.
A publish-subscribe protocol (formerly PubSubHubbub) for real-time content distribution. Notifies subscribers immediately when new content is published.
The organization of web content using semantic HTML (headings, lists, tables, sections). Well-structured content is easier for AI to parse and cite.
Descriptive text for images (<img alt='...'>). Helps AI models understand visual content and improves accessibility.
Twitter/X-specific meta tags (twitter:card, twitter:title, twitter:image) that control how links appear in tweets.
A structured database of entities and relationships used by Google and AI systems to understand real-world concepts and provide direct answers.
A highlighted answer box at the top of Google search results, often extracted from well-structured page content.
A search where the user gets their answer directly on the results page without clicking through to any website. Common with AI-generated answers.
Google's AI-generated summary answers shown at the top of search results, synthesized from multiple web sources.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation. An AI technique where a language model retrieves relevant documents before generating an answer, improving accuracy and enabling source citation.
Social Cards
Preview cards generated from OG and Twitter Card meta tags when URLs are shared on social platforms.