The Periodic Table of AEO & SEO

The AI written summary Google places above the regular search results. Full definition →

A short extracted passage an AI system pulls from a page into its answer. Full definition →

How often and how well a brand appears inside AI generated answers. Full definition →

A topic where competitors get cited by AI systems and you do not. Full definition →

A named source an AI system links to or credits inside its answer. Full definition →

Any reference to a brand in text, with or without a link. Full definition →

The percentage of AI answers in a category that name your brand. Full definition →

A search where the user gets an answer without clicking through to any website. Full definition →

Google's full conversational search experience, where results are a dialogue rather than a list. Full definition →

The boxed answer at the top of traditional search results, pulled from one page. Full definition →

The expandable question boxes on a Google results page that reveal more questions. Full definition →

Any place an AI system pulls information from when building an answer. Full definition →

A stripped down page format Google promoted for fast mobile loading. Full definition →

The software your team uses to publish and manage website content. Full definition →

The percentage of people who click after seeing your listing. Full definition →

Advertising where you pay each time someone clicks your ad. Full definition →

The practice of getting a website found in search results without paying for placement. Full definition →

The page of results a search engine returns for a query. Full definition →

A link from another website pointing to yours. Full definition →

A third party score estimating how strong a website is overall. Full definition →

Your company's listing in Google Maps and local search results. Full definition →

Links between pages on your own website. Full definition →

What the person is actually trying to accomplish with their search. Full definition →

Finding the terms and questions your buyers actually use. Full definition →

A longer, more specific search phrase with lower volume but clearer intent. Full definition →

A tag telling search engines not to pass credit through a link. Full definition →

A defined way for two software systems to exchange data automatically. Full definition →

A proposed file that tells AI systems how to read and use your site. Full definition →

Structured code that labels what each item on a page actually is. Full definition →

A tag naming the preferred version of a page that exists at several addresses. Full definition →

How much attention a search engine will spend crawling your site. Full definition →

Google's measures of loading speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. Full definition →

Tags telling search engines which language or country version of a page to show. Full definition →

A protocol that pushes new or updated pages to search engines immediately. Full definition →

Whether a page is stored in a search engine's database and eligible to appear. Full definition →

The standard code format used to write schema markup. Full definition →

Reviewing server records of which bots visited which pages. Full definition →

An instruction sending visitors and crawlers from an old address to a new one. Full definition →

A file at your domain root that tells crawlers which areas they may access. Full definition →

A file listing every page you want search engines to find. Full definition →

The identifier a bot presents when it requests a page. Full definition →

Optimizing content so AI answer engines quote it accurately. Full definition →

Optimizing an app listing so it is found in app store search. Full definition →

Improving the percentage of visitors who take the action you want. Full definition →

Google's framework for judging whether content comes from a credible source. Full definition →

Optimizing content specifically for AI systems that generate answers. Full definition →

An older method of grouping words that appear together in similar contexts. Full definition →

The technology that lets machines read and interpret human language. Full definition →

Text describing an image for readers and machines that cannot see it. Full definition →

Finding topics your buyers search that your site does not cover. Full definition →

The surrounding information that shapes how an AI answers a question. Full definition →

Deliberately shaping how machines identify and describe your company. Full definition →

How recently content was published or meaningfully updated. Full definition →

The ordered structure of headings that organizes a page. Full definition →

A comprehensive page on a core topic that links out to related detail pages. Full definition →

When a system pulls one passage from a page rather than the whole page. Full definition →

Writing content as clear questions with direct answers underneath. Full definition →

How central a specific entity is to a page's subject. Full definition →

Breaking a document into smaller sections for a machine to process. Full definition →

Tying an AI answer to real retrieved sources rather than memory alone. Full definition →

When an AI states something false with complete confidence. Full definition →

A structured database of things and the relationships between them. Full definition →

Work aimed at influencing how large language models represent a brand. Full definition →

A method where an AI searches for documents and answers from what it finds. Full definition →

Numerical representations of meaning that let machines compare concepts. Full definition →

How much text a model can hold in mind at one time. Full definition →

Further training a model on specific data to specialize its behavior. Full definition →

The date after which a model has no built in knowledge. Full definition →

Systems that handle images, audio, and video alongside text. Full definition →

How often an AI system re-reads its sources and updates what it knows. Full definition →

A second pass that reorders retrieved results by relevance before answering. Full definition →

A measure of how closely two pieces of text match in meaning. Full definition →

The standing instructions that set an AI assistant's role and rules. Full definition →

The small units of text that models read and that vendors bill for. Full definition →

The body of text a model learned from during training. Full definition →

A database built to store and search meaning based representations of text. Full definition →

Putting the conclusion in the first sentence, before the supporting detail. Full definition →

A framework for tracking how brands are cited across AI systems. Full definition →

Google's analytics platform for tracking website behavior. Full definition →

Google's free tool showing how your site performs in its search results. Full definition →

Whether a page adds something the existing results do not already contain. Full definition →

The specific number a team is held to. Full definition →

What you earned compared with what you spent. Full definition →

Your share of total category conversation or advertising presence. Full definition →

A group of related pages covering one subject thoroughly. Full definition →

Assigning credit for a sale across the touchpoints that influenced it. Full definition →

The total cost to acquire one customer. Full definition →

How many times someone selected your listing. Full definition →

Your share of all AI citations in your category. Full definition →

The share of visitors who complete the action you wanted. Full definition →

How long someone stays on your page before leaving. Full definition →

How many times your listing was displayed. Full definition →

Whether an activity produced results that would not have happened anyway. Full definition →

Visits arriving from AI assistants rather than traditional search. Full definition →

The total revenue expected from a customer over the relationship. Full definition →

How many people ask a given question of AI systems. Full definition →

Monitoring where your pages appear for target searches over time. Full definition →

Your share of total category revenue. Full definition →

Your share of category search volume compared with competitors. Full definition →

Tags added to links so analytics can identify where traffic came from. Full definition →

Managing what appears about your company when someone looks it up. Full definition →

Measuring whether what is said about you is positive, negative, or neutral. Full definition →

Optimizing social content so it is found and surfaces well. Full definition →

The credibility of the named person who wrote a piece. Full definition →

How many people search for your company by name. Full definition →

Earning press coverage specifically to build authority and links. Full definition →

An estimate of what earned coverage would have cost as advertising. Full definition →

Keeping your name, address, and phone number identical everywhere. Full definition →

Publishing announcements through a wire service to reach media and databases. Full definition →

Sites where customers publicly rate your product, such as G2 or Yelp. Full definition →

Your company's entry in Wikidata or Wikipedia. Full definition →

The share of an audience that interacts with a post. Full definition →

Paying or partnering with people who have an established audience. Full definition →

Discussion in communities such as Reddit that AI systems read heavily. Full definition →

Monitoring what people say about your brand and category in public. Full definition →

Evidence that others already trust you. Full definition →

Optimizing video so it is found in YouTube and Google search. Full definition →

The stage where a buyer first learns a solution exists. Full definition →

The full path a buyer takes from first awareness to purchase and beyond. Full definition →

Coordinating channels so they reinforce one another rather than run separately. Full definition →

The stage where a buyer compares options seriously. Full definition →

The stage where a buyer commits and involves approvers. Full definition →

How many times a buyer returns to you during their research. Full definition →

Sponsored articles and placements you pay a publisher to run. Full definition →

Managing your reputation and relationships with media and the public. Full definition →

How long since a buyer last engaged with you. Full definition →

Keeping and growing customers after the sale. Full definition →

How many exposures a buyer needs before acting. Full definition →

Recognized depth on a specific subject rather than general site strength. Full definition →

Any single interaction between a buyer and your brand. Full definition →

AI agents that search, compare, and act on a person's behalf. Full definition →

A machine identifying a specific person, company, or thing in text. Full definition →

When one question is expanded into several related searches behind the scenes. Full definition →

An assistant retaining information about a user across conversations. Full definition →

The same question can produce different answers each time. Full definition →

The instruction or question given to an AI system. Full definition →

The answer an AI system returns to a question. Full definition →

Search that matches meaning rather than exact words. Full definition →

Emerging standards that let AI agents complete purchases directly. Full definition →

Tools claiming to identify whether text was written by AI. Full definition →

An AI mode that runs many searches and returns a sourced report. Full definition →

An open standard letting AI assistants connect to external tools and data. Full definition →

A back and forth exchange rather than a single question. Full definition →

Answers tailored to the individual asking. Full definition →

Hidden instructions in content that manipulate an AI system reading it. Full definition →

Searching using an image rather than words. Full definition →

Searching by speaking rather than typing. Full definition →