Glossary
The language of AI visibility
Clear definitions for the terms behind answer engine optimization — no jargon for its own sake.
Query Fan-Out
The technique Google's AI Mode uses to break one question into many sub-queries, then synthesize the results into a single answer.
GPTBot
OpenAI's crawler that collects web content for training its models. ChatGPT search uses a separate crawler, OAI-SearchBot.
AI Crawler
A bot that fetches web content to feed AI systems — for training, live retrieval, or both — such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot.
Entity SEO
Optimizing so search and AI systems recognize your brand as a clear, well-defined entity — not just a string of keywords.
Share of Voice (in AI Search)
Your brand's slice of all brand mentions across AI answers for your category — the AI-era version of a classic marketing metric.
Agentic Search
Search performed by an AI agent that plans, runs multiple queries, reads results and synthesizes — instead of a human scanning links.