Glossary
The terms. Explained without jargon.
Every entry answers one question: what is this – and what does it mean for my business? Definition first, example second.
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A
A/B Test
An A/B test is a comparative experiment in which you pit two variants (A and B) against each other to measure which one performs better.
AI assistant
An AI assistant is a software program based on artificial intelligence that answers questions, performs tasks, and gives recommendations via natural language.
AI Citation
An AI citation is the naming and linking of your website or brand as a source within an AI-generated answer, for example on ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews.
AI crawler
An AI crawler is an automated program that systematically retrieves websites in order to make their content usable for AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity.
AI Ranking
AI ranking describes where your brand, product, or content appears when an AI assistant like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity answers a question.
AI recommendation
An AI recommendation is a concrete suggestion that an AI assistant like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity gives a user in its answer.
AI Search
AI search refers to information retrieval via systems with artificial intelligence that formulate a finished answer to a question in natural language, instead of just showing a list of blue links.
AI Visibility
AI visibility describes how present and how often a brand, product, or website appears in the answers of AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity.
Alt Text
Alt text (alternative text) is a short text description that you assign to an image in the HTML code.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link - that is, the words that appear on a web page underlined in blue or highlighted in color and that point to another page.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the targeted optimization of content so that answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews pick it up and cite it in their direct answers.
Answer Page
An answer page is a web page that deliberately answers a concrete question fully and self-containedly.
Anthropic
Anthropic is a US-based AI company that develops the Claude model family - large language models that understand and generate text.
Article Schema
The article schema is a format for structured data (schema.org/Article) with which you tell a web page in a machine-readable way that its content is an editorial article.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a collective term for computer systems that take on tasks that otherwise require human thinking: understanding language, recognizing patterns, drawing conclusions, and formulating answers.
Author Profile
An author profile is the structured presentation of the person who wrote a piece of content: name, photo, field of expertise, qualifications and references to further work.
B
Backlink
A backlink is a reference from another website to your own page.
Baseline Measurement
A baseline measurement is the first systematic inventory of your AI visibility at a fixed starting point, before you take any action.
Benchmark
A benchmark is a firmly defined yardstick against which you measure your own performance.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate measures the share of visitors who leave your website again after viewing only a single page, without triggering any further action.
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness describes how many people know your brand and associate it with an industry, a product or a need.
Brand Mention
A brand mention is any occurrence of your brand or company name in the answer of an AI assistant like ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity.
Breadcrumb Navigation
The breadcrumb navigation is a small signpost bar, usually at the top of a web page, that shows exactly where you are within the site structure, for example Home > Guide > Travel Tips.
C
Call-to-Action
A call-to-action (CTA) is a targeted prompt that moves a reader or user to take a concrete next step, such as "Book now", "Request a quote" or "Subscribe to the newsletter".
Canonical Tag
A canonical tag is a small snippet of HTML in the head of a web page with which you tell search engines and AI crawlers the preferred, authoritative version of a page.
Case Study
A case study is a documented success story that shows how a specific problem was solved for a particular customer.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot from the US company OpenAI, based on a large language model.
Citability
Citability describes how well a piece of content is suited to being adopted verbatim as a source by an AI search or an AI assistant and named in an answer.
Citation Rate
The citation rate measures how often an AI assistant like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity names or links your website as a source in its answers – measured against the number of relevant queries.
Claude
Claude is an AI assistant from the US company Anthropic, based on a large language model.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The click-through rate (CTR) measures how many people click on a link, relative to everyone who saw it.
Comparison Article
A comparison article is an editorial piece of content that systematically contrasts several products, services, or providers and evaluates them against uniform criteria.
Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis is the systematic examination of your competitors in order to assess their strengths, weaknesses, and visibility.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a marketing method in which you create and distribute useful, relevant content instead of running advertising directly.
Content Strategy
Content strategy is the overarching plan that defines which content you create for which target audience, why, in what order and with what goal.
Context Window
The context window is the maximum amount of text that an AI language model like ChatGPT or Claude can process at once.
Conversational Search
Conversational search is a form of search in which you ask your question in natural language and refine it in dialogue, instead of entering individual keywords.
Conversion Rate
The conversion rate is the share of visitors who perform a desired action, divided by all visitors.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are a set of three measurable metrics from Google that describe how quickly, stably and responsively a web page loads from the perspective of real users.
Crawling
Crawling is the automated process in which a program – a so-called crawler or bot – systematically visits web pages, reads their content and follows links to discover further pages.
Customer Journey
The customer journey is the entire path a person travels from first becoming aware of a need, through research, to the purchase decision and beyond.
D
Digital PR
Digital PR is public relations on the web: you make sure your brand is covered on credible online sources, such as trade media, industry portals, blogs or news sites.
Domain Authority
Domain authority is an estimate of how trustworthy and influential a website is considered to be overall.
Duplicate Content
Duplicate content refers to text content that appears identically or very similarly under several addresses on the internet, whether within a single website or across different domains.
Dwell Time
Dwell time is the span of time a visitor spends on a web page before bouncing away or clicking onward.
E
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.
Entity
An entity is a uniquely identifiable thing that a search engine or AI knows about: a person, a company, a place, a product or a concept.
Entity Optimisation
Entity optimisation means preparing your brand, people, products or places so that search engines and AI systems recognise them as clearly defined, unambiguous units (so-called entities) and classify them correctly.
Event Schema (Event)
The event schema (Event) is a structured data markup based on the Schema.org standard, with which you describe dates, concerts, courses, or trade fairs in a machine-readable way.
Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is text that stays relevant and correct over a long period because it covers a topic that barely changes.
F
Fact-Checking
Fact-checking is the systematic verification of statements, figures and claims for their accuracy against reliable sources.
FAQ Page
An FAQ page (frequently asked questions) is a website section that answers typical customer questions in clear question-answer pairs.
FAQ Schema
FAQ schema is a structured data markup based on the schema.org standard, with which you embed a list of questions and their corresponding answers into your website in machine-readable form.
Featured Snippet
A featured snippet is a highlighted answer box that Google displays above the classic search results.
Fine-Tuning
Fine-tuning is the targeted retraining of an already finished AI language model with your own selected example data.
Freshness
Freshness describes how new and well-maintained a piece of content is.
G
Gemini
Gemini is Google's AI model family and AI assistant.
Generative AI
Generative AI is a form of artificial intelligence that creates new content: text, images, code, audio or video.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) refers to the targeted optimization of content so that AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews name, cite and recommend your brand in their generated answers.
Generative Search
Generative search refers to a form of information search in which an AI system answers your question not with a list of blue links but by producing a formulated answer directly.
Glossary
A glossary is a structured collection of technical terms with short, self-contained explanations.
Google AI Overviews
Google AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that Google displays directly above the classic search results.
GPTBot
GPTBot is the web crawler of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
Grok
Grok is an AI assistant and large language model from the company xAI, closely integrated with the platform X (formerly Twitter).
Guide Article
A guide article is an editorial piece of content that answers a specific question or solves a specific problem for its target audience, step by step.
H
Hallucination
A hallucination is a false statement by an AI that sounds confident and linguistically convincing but is factually wrong or entirely made up.
Heading Hierarchy
The heading hierarchy is the logical structure of a text via graded heading levels, in HTML code from H1 (main heading) down to H6.
HowTo schema
The HowTo schema is a structured data format from the schema.org vocabulary with which you mark up a step-by-step guide in a machine-readable way.
hreflang
hreflang is an HTML attribute that tells search engines which language and region a particular version of a page is intended for.
HTTP Status Code
An HTTP status code is a three-digit number a server sends back when someone requests a page.
HTTPS encryption
HTTPS encryption secures the data transfer between your visitors' browser and your web server.
I
J
K
Keyword
A keyword is the word or phrase that people enter into a search field or an AI assistant to find something.
Keyword cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization refers to the case where several pages of a website target the same search term and thereby compete with one another.
Keyword research
Keyword research is the systematic search for the words and questions with which people search for a topic, product, or offering.
Knowledge Base
A knowledge base is a structured, centrally maintained collection of information about a company, its products, services, and frequent questions.
Knowledge Graph
A knowledge graph is a structured database that stores real things – such as people, places, brands, or products – as nodes and connects them with one another via named relationships.
Knowledge Panel
A Knowledge Panel is the info box that Google shows to the right of or above the search results when you search for a well-known person, brand, place, or company.
L
Landing Page
A landing page is a single web page on which visitors deliberately "land" after clicking on an ad, a search result, or a link.
Language Model
A language model is an AI system trained to understand and generate human language.
Large Language Model (LLM)
A large language model (LLM) is an AI system that has been trained on vast amounts of text and learns from it to understand and generate language itself.
Link Building
Link building refers to all the measures with which you deliberately gain references from other websites to your own page.
llms.txt
llms.txt is a standardized text file in the root directory of a website (at /llms.txt) that shows AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity, in structured form, which content of a site is especially important and well suited for machine processing.
Loading Time
The loading time is the span of time that passes until a web page is fully displayed and usable after it is called up.
Local SEO
Local SEO encompasses all the measures with which a business gets found better in location-based search queries, for instance "dentist near me" or "bakery Leipzig." The goal is for your business to appear in map results, in the local search block, and increasingly in AI answers, when people search for providers in a certain region and want to act quickly..
LocalBusiness Schema
The LocalBusiness schema is a format from the Schema.org vocabulary that lets you store structured data about a local business on your website in a machine-readable way.
Long-Tail Keyword
A long-tail keyword is a long, very specific search query, usually three to seven words, such as "gluten-free breakfast in Munich with a dog." It has little search volume but reveals a clear intent.
M
Machine Learning
Machine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence in which a computer learns from examples instead of following fixed rules.
Mention Rate
The mention rate measures how often a brand, product or company is named in the answers of AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity, relative to a fixed number of questions asked.
Meta Description
The meta description is a short text snippet in the HTML code of a web page that summarizes its content.
Meta Llama
Meta Llama is a family of large language models (LLMs) developed by the Meta corporation.
Meta Tag
A meta tag is an invisible code snippet in the head area of a web page that provides search engines and programs with information about the page.
Microdata
Microdata is a markup language with which you embed structured data directly into the HTML code of your web page.
Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft's AI assistant, built into Windows, Microsoft 365, the Edge browser and the Bing search engine.
Mistral
Mistral is a French AI company and, at the same time, the name of its language models.
Mobile Optimization
Mobile optimization refers to all measures that make a website fast, readable and operable on smartphones and tablets.
Multimodal AI
Multimodal AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that can understand and process several types of input at once – such as text, images, audio, video or tables.
N
O
Off-Page Optimization
Off-page optimization covers all measures outside your own website that strengthen its standing and recognition online.
On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization covers all measures you carry out directly on your own website to make it more understandable and more relevant for search engines and AI systems.
Open Graph
Open Graph is a protocol that uses special meta tags in a web page's source code to define how a link looks when shared.
OpenAI
OpenAI is a US AI company that develops and operates large language models (LLMs).
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is the visitors who reach your website via unpaid search results, meaning not via ads.
Organization Schema
The organization schema is a structured data block (usually as JSON-LD in the source code) that tells search engines and AI systems in a machine-readable way who stands behind a website: name, logo, address, contact details, legal form and official profiles.
P
Page Title (Title Tag)
The page title (title tag) is an HTML element in the head area of a web page that defines its title.
Perplexity
Perplexity means two things: first, an AI-powered answer engine (Perplexity AI) that delivers directly phrased answers with source citations to search queries, instead of just listing links.
Pillar Content
Pillar content is a comprehensive, thematically deep main article that covers an entire topic area in a structured way and serves as a central hub.
Position Zero
Position Zero is the spot above the first organic search result, where a search engine highlights a direct answer, usually as a featured snippet in a box.
Product Schema
The product schema is a structured data format (usually as JSON-LD following Schema.org) with which you mark up product information such as name, price, availability and reviews on a web page in a machine-readable way.
Prompt
A prompt is the input with which you tell an AI like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini what it should do.
Prompt Engineering
Prompt engineering is the targeted formulation of instructions (prompts) with which you steer an AI language model like ChatGPT or Claude.
R
Ranking Factor
A ranking factor is a measurable criterion that helps decide in which position a piece of content appears in search results or AI answers.
Reach
Reach describes how many people your brand, your content or your message actually reaches.
Responsive Design
Responsive design refers to the technique of building a website so that its layout automatically adapts to the screen size of the respective device.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is a method in which an AI language model, before answering, deliberately retrieves current documents from an external source and incorporates them into its answer.
Review Schema
The review schema is a structured data block in the schema.org standard with which you mark up customer reviews and star ratings in a machine-readable way.
Rich Snippet
A rich snippet is an enhanced search result that displays additional information alongside the title and description – such as star ratings, prices, availability or cooking times.
robots.txt
The robots.txt is a simple text file in the root directory of a website that tells crawlers which areas they may visit and which not.
S
Schema.org
Schema.org is a shared vocabulary for structured data with which you mark up content on your website unambiguously for machines.
Search Engine Crawler
A search engine crawler is an automated program that systematically visits web pages, reads their content and follows links in order to capture the internet for search engines.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) covers all the measures with which you shape a website so that it appears as high as possible in the unpaid results of search engines like Google.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
The search results page, SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for short, is the page a search engine like Google shows you after a search query.
Search Intent
Search intent is the actual goal behind a search query: what a person really wants to achieve when they type a question into a search engine or an AI assistant.
Search Volume
Search volume indicates how often a particular search term (keyword) is entered into a search engine within a set period, usually per month.
SearchGPT
SearchGPT is OpenAI's search and answer function that answers user questions directly with a formulated answer instead of just a list of links.
Semantic Search
Semantic search is a search method that captures the meaning and intent behind a query, instead of searching only for exactly matching keywords.
Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis is a computational linguistics method that automatically evaluates texts for whether they express a positive, negative or neutral mood.
Share of Voice
Share of Voice (SoV) measures what share of the total visibility on a topic your brand has – compared to the competition.
Source Citation
A source citation is the indication of where a piece of information or a statement comes from.
Structured Data
Structured data is machine-readable additional information you embed in your website's code to give content a clear meaning.
System Prompt
A system prompt is a hidden base instruction an AI assistant receives before every user question.
T
Target Audience
The target audience is the clearly delineated group of people you want to reach with your offering.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO covers all the measures on a website's technical foundation so that search engines and AI crawlers can find, understand and process your content without trouble.
Temperature (AI model)
Temperature is a setting value in AI language models that controls how predictable or how creative the generated answers turn out.
Token
A token is the smallest processing unit into which an AI language model breaks down text.
Topic Cluster
A topic cluster is a group of thematically connected web pages that cover a core topic from many angles and are linked to one another.
Training Data
Training data is the texts, images and datasets with which an AI model like ChatGPT or Claude learns.
Transformer Model
A transformer model is an architecture for neural networks that processes language by looking at all the words of a text at once and, via the so-called attention mechanism, weighting which words are important to one another.
U
Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
A unique selling proposition (USP) is the one advantage that clearly sets your offering apart from all others and that no competitor offers in the same form.
URL Structure
URL structure describes how a website's web addresses are built and organized – that is, how folders, paths, and names are assembled in the address bar.
V
Vector Database
A vector database is a storage system that stores texts, images, or other content not as words but as long sequences of numbers (vectors).
Vector Embedding (Embedding)
A vector embedding (embedding) is the translation of words, sentences, or entire texts into a list of numbers.
Visibility Score
The visibility score is a metric that summarizes how present your brand is in answers from AI assistants and search engines.
Voice Search
Voice search refers to searching the internet via spoken language instead of typed words.