Glossary

Short, plain answers to the terms that come up when you work on search, AI answers and ads. Each one links to the page that goes further.

AI search

What is generative engine optimisation (GEO)?

Generative engine optimisation is the work of making your business easy for AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity to find, understand and name when someone asks a question in your category. It overlaps with SEO, because many assistants read web pages to build their answers, but the result you track is different: whether you are named in the answer, not where a page ranks. The full explainer is what is generative engine optimisation.

What is AI visibility?

AI visibility is how often, and how, AI assistants mention your business when they answer the questions your buyers ask. You measure it by asking a fixed set of questions on a schedule and recording which businesses each answer names and which sources it read. The AI search (GEO) agent does this for your category, and our guide shows how to check whether AI assistants recommend you.

What is AI share of voice?

AI share of voice is your share of all the brand mentions in AI answers to a set of questions. If the answers to your questions name brands 40 times in total and you are named 10 of those times, your share of voice is 25%. These figures are an illustration, not a benchmark.

What is llms.txt?

llms.txt is a proposed plain-text file at the root of a website, such as example.com/llms.txt, that lists the pages an AI model should read first, with a short description of each. The proposal is published at llmstxt.org. It is a convention, not a standard that every assistant follows.

Search and SEO

What is an indexable page?

An indexable page is one a search engine is allowed to add to its index. In practice it returns a 200 status, has no noindex instruction, and its canonical URL points to itself. A page that fails any of these can be crawled and still never appear in search results.

What is a canonical URL?

A canonical URL is the address you tell search engines to treat as the main version of a page when the same content is reachable at more than one address, for example with and without tracking parameters. You set it with a rel="canonical" link in the page's head.

What is Google Search Console?

Search Console is Google's free tool for site owners. It shows which searches your pages appeared for, how many impressions and clicks they got, their average position, and which pages Google has indexed. The SEO agent reads it alongside its own crawl of your site.

Google Ads

What is the difference between a keyword and a search term?

A keyword is what you choose to bid on in Google Ads. A search term is the exact query someone typed that triggered your ad. One keyword can match many different search terms, and the search terms report is where you see which of them spent money without converting.

What is a negative keyword?

A negative keyword is a word or phrase you add to a campaign or ad group so your ads do not show for searches that contain it. Adding the search terms that keep spending without converting as negatives is one of the most common ways to cut wasted spend.

What is a negative keyword conflict?

A negative keyword conflict is a negative that blocks searches you also want to show for, often ones that convert. It usually happens when an old, broad negative stays in place after the account changes. The Google Ads agent looks for negatives that block converting searches, and our guide covers finding wasted spend in your search terms.

Targets and reporting

What is a KRA in marketing?

A KRA, or key result area, is a broad area of results a team is accountable for, such as leads from search or visibility in AI answers. Each KRA is measured by one or more KPIs, and a target says what level of each KPI counts as success by a set date.

What is the difference between a KRA and a KPI?

A KRA names the area that matters; a KPI is the number you track inside it. "Leads from search" is a KRA. "Demo requests from organic search each month" is a KPI within it. GX360's KRA scorecard holds both, with quarterly targets, on the Growth and Scale plans; see the KRA agent.