01
AEO
The answer surface
The box that shows the direct answer above the blue links. Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot, Perplexity, voice assistants, featured snippets.
Question-led H2s · 40–60 word leads · FAQPage + HowTo + Article schema.
§ · Glossary
The vocabulary of
AI search.
Every term you need to talk about how content gets cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — from AEO to zero-click. Tap any term for the full definition, the per-term FAQ, and a “How Mentionwell handles it” section.
§ 04 · The Vocabulary
Start with the seven
that matter most.
The AI answer layer is a stack of overlapping practices. Most tools pick one and call it a day. Mentionwell handles the whole alphabet — at the same time, on every article.
AEO
01
Answer Engine Optimization
Shape content so AI assistants cite you by name when they answer questions.
The practice of writing for ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity the way SEO was written for Google in 2008.
GEO
02
Generative Engine Optimization
Princeton 2023. Tactics that increase visibility inside generated answers.
Statistical evidence, named entities, direct quotation, and structural cues.
LLMO
03
LLM Optimization
Make your content tractable for the language models that summarize the web.
Clean structure, fact-density, citation-shape — what the model wants to lift verbatim.
AIO
04
AI Optimization
Umbrella term. AEO + GEO + LLMO + emergent surfaces.
For when a buyer asks for the whole thing and doesn't want to pick.
AISO
05
AI Search Optimization
Optimization for AI-native search products — Perplexity, You.com, SearchGPT.
Fast retrieval, citation-rich pages, schema-clean.
SGE
06
Search Generative Experience
Google's generative result surface. Now folded into AI Overviews.
Featured snippets, but the snippet is a paragraph the model wrote citing five sources.
SEO
07
Search Engine Optimization
The classic. Still pays the bills. Mentionwell does this too — by default.
Title, meta, headings, internal links, structured data, page speed, the whole catechism.
Footnote
Read the long versions in the glossary spokes — each acronym has its own page and OG card.
§ · The full alphabet
Every term, A–Z.
All 34 entries in the AI-search vocabulary. Each links to a dedicated answer page with definition, FAQ, and how Mentionwell handles it.
- AEO Answer Engine Optimization Be the answer.
- AI Crawler AI Crawler / Bot GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and friends.
- AI Overviews Google AI Overviews Google's generative answer surface.
- AIO AI Optimization Umbrella term — usually means AEO + GEO + LLMO.
- AISO AI Search Optimization B2B-flavored umbrella — overlaps GEO, AEO, LLMO.
- Answer Engine Answer Engine Returns answers, not links.
- Brand Mentions Brand Mentions Unlinked mentions still count.
- ChatGPT Search ChatGPT Search OpenAI's web-grounded answer mode.
- Citation AI Citation Being the source the model links to.
- Copilot Microsoft Copilot Bing's AI answer surface.
- E-E-A-T Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust Google's quality framework.
- Embeddings Vector Embeddings & Semantic Search Meaning as coordinates.
- Entity SEO Entity SEO Optimize for things, not just keywords.
- Featured Snippet Featured Snippet Position zero — the answer above the links.
- GenAI Generative AI Models that produce content, not just classify it.
- GEO Generative Engine Optimization Be the cited source.
- Grounding Grounding Tying answers to verifiable sources.
- Hallucination Hallucination Confident, fluent, and wrong.
- Knowledge Graph Knowledge Graph The web of entities engines use to reason.
- LLM Large Language Model The model behind every AI answer.
- LLMO LLM Optimization Be reachable, parseable, ingestible.
- llms.txt llms.txt robots.txt, but for LLM context.
- PAA People Also Ask The expandable question stack.
- Perplexity Perplexity Answer engine built on visible citations.
- Prompt Injection Prompt Injection Hidden instructions that hijack the model.
- pSEO Programmatic SEO Templated content at scale.
- RAG Retrieval-Augmented Generation Grounding answers in retrieved sources.
- robots.txt robots.txt for AI Crawl policy in the AI era.
- Schema.org Schema.org / Structured Data Machine-readable meaning for every page.
- SEO Search Engine Optimization The original — still 50%+ of traffic.
- SERP Search Engine Results Page The result page — now part-AI, part-links.
- SGE Search Generative Experience optimization Google-specific — now folded into AI Overviews.
- Topical Authority Topical Authority Be the deepest source on a topic.
- Zero-Click Zero-Click Search Answered without a click.
§ · How they fit together
Three surfaces.
One pipeline.
AEO targets the answer surface. GEO targets the generative surface. LLMO targets the model and its crawlers. They overlap heavily — Mentionwell optimizes for all three plus classic SEO at the same time, on every published article.
02
GEO
The generative surface
The synthesized paragraph the model writes citing 3–5 sources. ChatGPT Search, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity. Goal: be one of the cited sources.
Stats · expert quotes · inline citations · per-article .md mirrors.
03
LLMO
The model & its crawlers
The plumbing. AEO and GEO can't fire if the model can't reach, parse, or trust your content. GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended.
llms.txt · per-page .md · stable canonicals · explicit crawler allowlist.
The other four — AIO, AISO, SGE, and SEO — are either umbrella terms over these three, Google-specific subsets of AEO, or the classic blue-link discipline they all sit on top of.
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