GEO & AI Visibility Glossary

AI mention rate

The percentage of AI prompts — across a defined set of queries relevant to your category — for which your brand appears in the AI response. A brand with a 45% mention rate appears in 45 out of every 100 relevant prompts. This is the primary metric in GEO.

AI search visibility

A broad term for how discoverable a brand is within AI-generated responses across platforms including ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Analogous to "search visibility" in traditional SEO, but measured in mention rates rather than keyword rankings.

Entity

A distinct, named thing that can be unambiguously identified — a company, product, person, or place. AI language models maintain representations of well-known entities and reference them in responses. Strong entity establishment — consistent, clear signals about what your brand is — improves the reliability of AI citations.

Entity prominence

How well-established and widely discussed an entity is in the sources that AI models have learned from. An entity with high prominence — discussed frequently by authoritative sources — is more reliably cited in AI responses than a lesser-known entity.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

The discipline of improving a brand's visibility within AI-generated responses. GEO involves strategies for entity establishment, citation building, question-answering content, and AI mention rate measurement. It is analogous to SEO but optimises for inclusion in synthesised AI answers rather than position in link-based search results.

Google AI Overviews

AI-generated summaries produced by Google and displayed above organic search results for many informational queries. AI Overviews synthesise information from multiple sources and are powered by a large language model. They are a distinct visibility surface from organic rankings — a brand can rank well organically while being absent from the AI Overview.

Knowledge graph

A structured database of entities, attributes, and relationships. Google's Knowledge Graph is the most influential for brand visibility purposes — entities with a Knowledge Graph presence (including a Knowledge Panel) are better understood by AI systems and more reliably cited.

Perplexity AI

A conversational AI search engine that retrieves real-time web content and synthesises cited answers to user queries. Unlike ChatGPT, Perplexity always cites its sources, making visibility on Perplexity directly measurable via citation tracking. It skews toward technically sophisticated, research-oriented users.

Prompt coverage

The breadth of query types and phrasings for which a brand appears in AI responses. A brand with narrow prompt coverage appears in AI answers only for very specific queries; one with wide prompt coverage appears across diverse, varied phrasings. Wider prompt coverage correlates with greater topical authority.

Prompt engineering (for GEO)

In GEO contexts, the practice of designing and curating the set of prompts used to measure AI visibility. Good prompt engineering ensures that the scan covers the full range of queries your target customers actually ask, in the phrasings they use, across multiple AI platforms.

Sentiment analysis

The classification of how positively or negatively a brand is described in AI responses. A brand can have a high mention rate but be associated with negative sentiment — e.g., mentioned as a cautionary example. Sentiment analysis distinguishes between appearing in AI responses and being portrayed favourably.

Share of voice (AI)

Your brand's AI mention rate expressed relative to competitors in the same category. If your brand appears in 40% of relevant prompts and your main competitor appears in 65%, your share of voice is lower. Share of voice tracks the competitive landscape rather than absolute mention rates.

Structured data

Machine-readable markup (typically schema.org vocabulary, implemented as JSON-LD) that tells search engines and AI crawlers what a web page or entity is about. Well-implemented structured data — Organization, Product, FAQ, Review schemas — helps AI systems correctly categorise and reference your brand.

Topical authority

The depth and breadth of a brand's published content and citations on a given topic. A brand with high topical authority on "project management software" has extensive, high-quality content about that topic and is widely cited by others writing about it. Topical authority influences both organic rankings and AI mention rates.

Visibility score

An aggregate metric summarising a brand's AI search visibility across platforms and prompt types. In BrandPulse, the visibility score combines mention rates across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews into a single comparable number, enabling trend tracking over time.