Reference · Terms used in our reports · 2026

What do the terms in AI visibility mean?

Short definitions of the words used on this site and in our reports, written for the owner of a local service business rather than for a marketer. Where a term has a specific meaning in our method, the definition here is the one the reports use, so a word in a month-six report means what it meant in month one. Terms are grouped by what they describe: the engines, the measurement, and the work. Twenty-four entries.

By Austin Brewer, founder of AI Visibility Partners · Updated 10 September 2026

Which terms describe the engines?

The four engines this site measures and the parts of their behavior that matter for whether a firm is named. The terms are used in the sense the reports use them; where an engine's maker uses a term differently, the report says so.

Generative engine: A system that answers a question by writing a response rather than returning a list of links. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews are the four this site measures.
AI Overview: The generated summary Google places above ordinary results for some queries. It does not appear for every query on every run, so a prompt that never triggered one is reported as untriggered rather than as a zero.
Retrieval: The step where an engine searches the web and reads a small number of pages before writing an answer. A page that is never retrieved cannot be cited.
Citation: A source the engine shows or links beside its answer. A firm can be named without being cited, and its site can be cited without the firm being named in the prose.
Clean session: A signed-out browser with no prior conversation, memory, or account history, with location set through the engine's own control where one exists. The only condition two measurements a month apart can share.
Directory: A site that lists many businesses by city and trade: Yelp, Angi, Avvo, Healthgrades, Houzz, Thumbtack. Directories hold most list-type answers because they have a structured, dated page for every city and trade.

Which terms describe the measurement?

The vocabulary of the scoring sheet and the monthly report. Each term has one meaning in our method and the report uses it consistently, so a number in month six can be compared to the same number in month one.

Prompt panel: The fixed list of 25 to 50 buyer-intent prompts (50 to 75 for Growth Authority) written down and dated before the first run. Prompts can be added and are reported separately; none is swapped or removed.
Registration: The dated document, held by both parties before any engine is queried, that fixes the panel, engines, session protocol, passes, scoring rule, measures, noise floor method, cadence, and publication rule.
Cell: One prompt on one engine. A 32-prompt panel across four engines is 128 cells.
Pass: One run of one cell in a new clean session. Every cell is run three times.
Coverage: The share of cells in which the firm was named in at least two of three passes. A cell named once in three is logged and does not count.
Mention coverage: Coverage counted on whether the firm's name appears in the answer text.
Owned-citation coverage: Coverage counted on whether a page on the firm's own domain is cited as a source.
Third-party-source presence: Coverage counted on whether a cited source other than the firm's site, such as a directory profile or local publication, mentions the firm.
Noise floor: The difference between two baseline runs one week apart with no work done between them. Later movement smaller than this is reported as within noise.
Baseline: The first registered run of the panel, against which every later month is compared. The Snapshot is not a baseline; the Baseline Audit is.

Which terms describe the work?

What is done to a site and its surroundings between measurements, and what the monthly programs are made of. The terms are ordinary web practice with the marketing removed.

GEO: Generative engine optimization: work aimed at being retrieved, named, and cited in generated answers. Also sold as AEO (answer engine optimization) and AI SEO; the labels differ more than the work does.
SEO: Search engine optimization: work aimed at a position in a ranked list of links and the click that follows. Shares most of its inputs with GEO and none of its measurement.
Direct-answer paragraph: The first paragraph under a question-shaped heading, answering it in plain sentences with place and price range included, so the sentence can be lifted into a generated answer.
Structured data: Machine-readable facts added to a page in schema.org vocabulary, such as ProfessionalService for the business and FAQPage for questions whose marked-up text matches what is visible.
Entity consistency: The same name, address, phone, and service list on the website and in every directory profile, so an engine reads one firm rather than several weak ones.
Authority brief: A short written pitch or contribution aimed at a third-party source, such as a local publication or association, so that a source the engines already trust mentions the firm.
Workstream: One bounded piece of remediation from the backlog, scoped to be finished inside a month, such as rewriting the four service pages or reconciling directory profiles.
Exit package: What a client receives when an engagement ends: the registration, every scoring sheet, the pages and structured data, and the backlog, in a form the next contractor can use. Part of the scope, not a favor.

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