Network disclosure. All ten sites in this network are published by Bay Area AEO. They cover answer engine optimization in the Bay Area from ten angles and link to one another so readers can move between related topics.
The definitions are short on purpose. Where a term drives a procedure, the
entry links to it. The full reference treatment of each term is in the
reference glossary .
A Terms under A. Term Working definition Procedure AEO Answer engine optimization: making a business easy for AI assistants to find, understand and recommend, so its name appears in the written answer. Complete playbook AI crawler The software an AI company uses to fetch web pages, such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot. A site that allows these crawlers can be read and quoted. Master checklist AI Mode Google's conversational search mode, which answers a question in prose and links the sources it drew on. Google profile SOP AI Overviews The AI-written summary Google shows above its regular results for many questions. A local business can be named inside it. Google profile SOP AI visibility audit A structured check of what AI assistants say about a business: the customer questions asked, who gets named, how the business is described and which sources are cited. AI visibility audit SOP AIO AI optimization: a broad label for making a business easy for AI systems to understand, trust and recommend. Complete playbook AI SEO Artificial intelligence search engine optimization: SEO adapted for AI-powered search, including Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. Complete playbook Answer engine A system that replies with a written answer instead of a list of links. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews are answer engines. Fan-out coverage SOP Answer-ready content Service pages, FAQs and structured data written so an AI system has a specific, quotable answer to a customer's question. Master checklist
B Terms under B. Term Working definition Procedure Bing Places Microsoft's business listing service. Its data feeds Bing search and the assistants that rely on Bing, including Copilot. Business fact sheet SOP Brand mention Any place a business is named on the web, linked or not. AI systems read mentions in local press, guides and directories as evidence. Master checklist Business entity A business as a distinct thing a machine can identify: one name, one set of locations, one set of services, recognised the same way across sources. Business fact sheet SOP
C Terms under C. Term Working definition Procedure ChatGPT OpenAI's assistant. When it searches the web it composes an answer from the pages it retrieves and can recommend named local businesses. AI visibility audit SOP Citation (AI) A source an AI assistant names or links when it composes an answer. Being cited is how a page earns a place in the answer. AI visibility audit SOP Citation (listing) A mention of a business's name, address and phone number on a directory or listing site. Consistent citations help AI resolve the business correctly. Business fact sheet SOP Claude Anthropic's assistant. With web search enabled it reads retrieved pages and can recommend businesses by name. AI visibility audit SOP Copilot Microsoft's assistant, which draws heavily on Bing's index and Bing Places data. AI visibility audit SOP Customer question The exact wording a real customer types or says to an AI assistant, such as a request for a dentist in San Mateo who takes a named insurance plan. AI visibility audit SOP
E Terms under E. Term Working definition Procedure Entity consistency The state in which a business's name, hours, address, phone and services match on every source AI reads. Business fact sheet SOP
F Terms under F. Term Working definition Procedure FAQ page A page of plain questions and direct answers. Assistants quote these answers when a customer asks the same question. Master checklist
G Terms under G. Term Working definition Procedure Gemini Google's assistant. It draws on Google's index and Google Business Profile data when it names local businesses. AI visibility audit SOP GEO Generative engine optimization: the same work as AEO, named for the generative AI engines that write answers instead of listing links. Complete playbook Google Business Profile The business record Google shows in Maps and local results. Assistants read its categories, hours, attributes and reviews. Business fact sheet SOP Grounding Tying an AI answer to retrieved sources so the facts in it come from pages the system just read. Grounded answers are where local recommendations come from. Fan-out coverage SOP
J Terms under J. Term Working definition Procedure JSON-LD The structured-data format Google prefers, placed in a script tag. It states a business's facts so machines need not infer them. Master checklist
K Terms under K. Term Working definition Procedure Knowledge graph A database of entities and the relationships between them. Search engines use one to know that a business, its founder and its locations belong together. Business fact sheet SOP
L Terms under L. Term Working definition Procedure Large language model The model behind an AI assistant. It writes the answer; the sources it retrieves decide which businesses the answer can name. Complete playbook Listing A business's entry on a platform such as Google, Bing, Apple Maps or Yelp. Business fact sheet SOP LLM SEO Large language model search engine optimization: optimizing for the models behind AI assistants and the sources they learn from and cite. Complete playbook Local pack The map with three businesses that Google shows for local searches. Its data overlaps with what AI assistants read. Neighborhood page SOP
M Terms under M. Term Working definition Procedure Mention rate How often a business is named across a fixed set of customer questions and AI platforms. The core number in AEO reporting. Monthly re-test SOP
N Terms under N. Term Working definition Procedure NAP Name, address, phone. Rendering them identically everywhere is the base of entity consistency. Business fact sheet SOP Neighborhood relevance How clearly a business's pages and listings tie it to the neighborhoods customers name in their questions, such as the Mission or Willow Glen. Neighborhood page SOP
P Terms under P. Term Working definition Procedure Perplexity An answer engine that searches the web for every question and shows numbered source citations beside its answer. AI visibility audit SOP Prompt The question or instruction a person gives an AI assistant. AI visibility audit SOP Prompt panel The fixed list of real customer questions run across AI platforms each month to track a business's visibility. Monthly re-test SOP
Q Terms under Q. Term Working definition Procedure Query fan-out An assistant splitting one question into many smaller searches, checking different sources for each, then combining the results. Fan-out coverage SOP
R Terms under R. Term Working definition Procedure Retrieval-augmented generation Fetching documents and having a model compose an answer from them. The architecture behind most AI answers that name local businesses. Fan-out coverage SOP Review language The words customers use in reviews. When customers describe what a business does best, AI repeats those specifics in its answers. Master checklist robots.txt The file that tells crawlers which parts of a site they may fetch. Allowing AI crawlers lets assistants read the site. Master checklist
S Terms under S. Term Working definition Procedure Schema markup Structured-data vocabulary from schema.org that tells AI a business's services, service area and hours. Master checklist Service area The cities and neighborhoods a business serves, stated clearly so an assistant can match it to a local question. Neighborhood page SOP Share of answer The portion of AI answers in a prompt panel that name a given business, compared with its competitors. Monthly re-test SOP Source citation rate How often a given page or listing is cited by AI assistants across a prompt panel. Monthly re-test SOP Structured data See schema markup. Master checklist
T Terms under T. Term Working definition Procedure Third-party mention A mention of a business on a site it does not own: local press, guides, directories and associations. AI weighs these as outside confirmation. Master checklist Trusted source A publication, directory or guide AI assistants regularly cite for a topic or place. Master checklist
V Terms under V. Term Working definition Procedure Vanity metric A number that moves without showing whether customers see the business in AI answers. Impressions and raw traffic are common examples. Monthly re-test SOP Voice assistant An assistant such as Siri that answers spoken questions, often from the same listing data the text assistants use. AI visibility audit SOP
Z Terms under Z. Term Working definition Procedure Zero-click search A search answered on the results page or in an AI answer, so the customer chooses a business without visiting a list of websites.
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