AEO Glossary: 80 Terms You’ll See in 2025

AEO Glossary: 80 Terms You’ll See in 2025 — a practical reference for teams working on AI SEO, AEO, and GEO. Use the anchor index to jump to terms, and check the source links for deeper reading. For a nuts-and-bolts walkthrough of Google’s pipeline, see How AI Overviews Work (Without the Hype).

Authoritative references used throughout: Google’s AI Overviews and AI features explainers (Google) (how it works) (AI features & your website); Structured data docs (Article) (FAQPage) (HowTo); RAG paper (Lewis et al., 2020); BM25 intro (Okapi BM25); INP metric (web.dev); robots.txt (Search Central); E-E-A-T (QRG update).

A

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

Practice of preparing content to be cited inside AI-generated answers across Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Copilot; emphasizes answer-first passages, structure, and trust.

AI Mode (Google)

Conversational search experience that expands on Overviews with deeper reasoning and chat-like follow-ups. See Google’s updates on AI experiences in Search (Google, 2025).

AI Overviews

AI-generated snapshots with links to “learn more,” triggered when synthesis helps; powered by a custom Gemini model for Search (Google).

Anchor Text

The clickable text of a link; descriptive anchors help retrieval systems understand relationships between pages and entities.

Answer Engine

System that synthesizes answers (with citations) instead of listing links; examples include AI Overviews, Perplexity, Bing Copilot.

Answer Passage

A short, self-contained paragraph that directly answers a question; the unit engines often extract and cite.

Answer Surface

The UI area where an AI-generated summary appears (e.g., AI Overviews block) with inline citations.

Article schema

JSON-LD describing articles (headline, author, datePublished, etc.), improving machine parseability (Docs).

Authorship Markup

Use Person/Organization structured data and on-page bios to establish credentials and trust (Org schema).

Topical Authority

The depth and coherence of coverage across a topic cluster (pillar + supporting pages); correlated with citation likelihood.

B

BM25

Classic lexical ranking function used in retrieval; balances term frequency and document length (Okapi BM25).

Backlink

An external link to your page; still a trust signal, but AEO emphasizes corroborated, answer-ready content over sheer link volume.

Bing Copilot

Microsoft’s answer engine that blends summaries with structured cards; shows citations alongside results.

BreadcrumbList schema

Markup that clarifies page position in your site’s hierarchy for users and crawlers.

C

Canonical URL

Signals the preferred version of a page when duplicates/params exist; helps consolidate signals and avoid dilution.

Inline Citation

Linked reference inside an AI summary; the core mechanic answer engines use to let users verify claims.

Chunking

Splitting long text into smaller passages for retrieval; improves recall and extractability.

Core Web Vitals

Field UX metrics (LCP, CLS, INP) used by Google; better responsiveness and stability support engagement (INP).

Crawl Budget

The number of URLs Googlebot can and wants to crawl; wasteful params and duplicates consume budget.

Crawling & Indexing

Discovery and storage phases of search; prerequisite for any AEO visibility.

Click-through Rate (CTR)

Share of impressions that become clicks; with Overviews, expect fewer low-intent clicks and higher qualified ones.

Content Freshness

Recency of facts and timestamps; essential for topics where AI features favor current information.

D

Data Provenance

Traceability of sources and updates; improves trust for both users and answer engines.

Deep Page

Specific, non-homepage URL with expert content; frequently cited in AI summaries versus generic homepages.

Deduplication

Systems collapse near-duplicate content to avoid redundant results; helps reduce noise in retrieval.

robots.txt Disallow

Rule to restrict crawler access to paths; note robots.txt is not a privacy mechanism (Search Central).

Domain Authority (3rd-party)

Unofficial, vendor-created metric; useful directionally, not a Google ranking factor.

E

E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness; principles from Google’s rater guidelines (QRG).

Embedding

Vector representation of text/images enabling semantic retrieval and re-ranking.

Entity

A distinct thing/concept (person, org, product). Entity clarity strengthens topical signals and disambiguation.

Entity Home

The canonical page that best describes an entity (often your about/author page) used for disambiguation.

Entity Linking

Connecting mentions to the correct entity (schema, consistent naming, sameAs) to reduce ambiguity (schema.org).

Extractive vs Abstractive Summarization

Extractive quotes text verbatim; abstractive composes new sentences. Overviews generally synthesize (abstractive) but ground in sources.

F

FAQPage schema

Explicit Q&A structure for common questions; boosts machine readability (Docs).

Faceted Navigation

Filters that explode URL combinations; control crawl with canonicals/noindex and maintain clean indexation.

Featured Snippet

Single-source extract shown atop results; distinct from Overviews, which synthesize multi-source summaries.

First-party Data

Your owned data (analytics, CRM). Useful for personalization and measuring AEO impact, not a direct ranking factor.

Fine-tuning (LLMs)

Adapting a base model on task-specific data; in search, often complemented by retrieval grounding (RAG).

Field vs Lab (UX)

Field data (real users) vs lab data (synthetic tests). CWV are field-based; optimize for actual user conditions.

G

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

Another name for AEO; emphasizes the generative pipeline that selects and cites passages.

Gemini (model)

Google’s family of models; AI Overviews use a custom Gemini for Search (Google).

Googlebot

Google’s crawler; respects robots.txt and fetches content to index.

Knowledge Graph

Google’s entity graph connecting people, places, things; supports disambiguation and richer results.

Grounding

Tying generated text to retrieved sources to reduce hallucinations; core idea in RAG (RAG).

Google Search Console (GSC)

Google’s measurement/diagnostics tool; track impressions/clicks and crawling/indexation. Some AI features have unique tracking caveats.

H

Hallucination

Confident but incorrect model output; mitigated (not eliminated) by grounding and evaluation loops.

Helpful Content

People-first pages that demonstrate expertise and satisfy intent; follow Google’s guidance on creating helpful content.

HowTo schema

Structured steps, tools, and materials for procedures; improves extractability (Docs).

Headings (H1–H3)

Semantic structure for scannability and passage discovery; map questions to H2/H3 where possible.

Human-in-the-Loop (HITL)

Human review for accuracy, safety, and nuance—especially critical in YMYL domains.

I

Internal Linking

Connects pillar pages to supporting content; clarifies topic clusters and improves passage discovery.

INP (Interaction to Next Paint)

Core Web Vital for responsiveness; lower INP reflects faster interactivity (web.dev).

Intent (Search Intent)

User purpose behind a query (informational, transactional, etc.); guides format and angle of answers.

Information Gain

New, non-obvious utility your page adds beyond existing results; a practical lens for differentiation.

Index Coverage (GSC)

Reports showing which URLs are indexed, excluded, or erroring; fix blockers before chasing AEO wins.

ImageObject schema

Structured data describing images (url, caption, author), aiding media understanding and licensing signals.

URL Parameters

Args appended to URLs that can cause duplicate content; consolidate with canonicals or parameter handling.

J

JSON-LD

Preferred format for structured data markup embedded in pages (Intro).

Jump Link (Anchor)

In-page link to a section; helps UX and can align with “answers above the fold.”

JavaScript SEO

Ensuring JS-rendered content is crawlable and indexable (SSR/ISR or hydration best practices).

K

Keyword Clustering

Grouping semantically related queries to design pillar/cluster coverage and avoid cannibalization.

Knowledge Graph (KG)

See also “Graph” above; entity relationships informing search understanding.

KNN Search

k-nearest neighbors retrieval over vectors; typical primitive for semantic search in vector DBs.

O

Ontology

Formal model of concepts and relationships in a domain; improves consistency of entity-centric content.

P

PAA (People Also Ask)

Expandable Q&A units in Google Search; useful for mining real questions to structure answer-first content.

Passage Ranking

Retrieval focus on specific paragraphs within a page; favors clearly scoped, answerable passages.

Perplexity (Answer Engine)

Real-time, citation-forward engine that summarizes with numbered sources; an additional discovery surface.

Product schema

Structured data for offers, reviews, and product details; important for ecommerce discovery (Docs).

Page Experience

Holistic UX signals (speed, stability, mobile-friendliness, HTTPS) that influence engagement and trust.

Q

Query Expansion

System strategy to broaden/clarify a query with related terms/entities to improve recall.

Quality Raters Guidelines (QRG)

Instructions guiding human raters in evaluating search systems; the source of E-E-A-T principles (Docs).

R

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

Pipeline that retrieves sources, then generates text grounded in them; reduces hallucinations (Lewis et al.).

S

Scaled Content Abuse

Spam policy violation where many low-value pages are generated; Google permits AI content if it meets quality standards (Policy).

Structured Data Markup

Machine-readable JSON-LD describing your content; helps understanding and rich presentation (Intro).

T

Tokens

Sub-word units processed by LLMs; impact context window and the size of passages for retrieval.

U

URL Parameters

See “Index Params” above—manage to avoid duplicate content and crawl waste.

V

Vector Database

Store/retrieve embeddings for semantic search; backbone of modern RAG retrieval.

Vector Search

Similarity search over embeddings (ANN/KNN); complements keyword retrieval (e.g., BM25).

X

X-Robots-Tag

HTTP header alternative to meta robots; control indexing for non-HTML assets and edge cases.

Y

YMYL (Your Money or Your Life)

High-stakes topics (finance, health, safety) where E-E-A-T and expert review are critical.

Z

Zero-click Search

Answers delivered on the SERP without a traditional click; Overviews intensify this for certain queries while still linking out.

Authoritative Sources & Further Reading

• Google: Generative AI in Search (AI Overviews rollout)
• Google: How AI Overviews work & quality updates
• Search Central: AI features & your website
• Structured Data: Article · FAQPage · HowTo
• Lewis et al. (2020): Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint) · robots.txt (Search Central) · Okapi BM25