AI search and AEO glossary

Answer engine

An answer engine is an AI system that responds to a question with a single synthesized answer written in natural language, rather than a ranked list of links.

ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Grok are common examples. The engine does the reading and comparing that a search user would otherwise do, which is why being named inside its answer matters more than ranking beside it.

Answer engine optimisation

Also: AEO

Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the work of being named, and named accurately, in the answers AI assistants give, rather than ranking in a list of links.

It covers what your pages say, how they are structured, and which sources the engines reach for when they answer questions in your category.

Generative engine optimisation

Also: GEO

Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of making a brand appear, accurately and favourably, in answers written by generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Grok.

Used interchangeably with AEO by most teams. Where they are distinguished, GEO leans on the generation side — the content and technical signals you change — and AEO on the answer you are trying to appear in.

AI visibility

Also: Visibility

AI visibility is how often and how favourably AI answers name your brand for the questions your buyers ask.

In Noma it is measured across your tracked prompts and every engine polled. A brand can be well known and invisible here, because the question is what the model says, not what people think.

Tracked prompt

A tracked prompt is one question, kept in a fixed set and put to every engine on the same schedule.

The set is what makes two weeks comparable: adding prompts you happen to win raises a score without anything changing in the world.

Share of voice

Share of voice is your share of all brand mentions in the AI answers to the same set of questions.

It moves for two reasons — you gained ground, or the category got busier — which is why it is read beside visibility rather than instead of it.

Position

Position is where your brand lands in an AI answer that names several brands.

Fourth in a five-brand answer is a mention, and it is not a recommendation.

Sentiment

Brand sentiment in AI answers is how an AI engine describes your brand when it names you.

Favourable, neutral or otherwise, scored consistently rather than sampled by hand. A mention that calls you expensive is not a win.

Brand mention

A brand mention is your brand named in the text of an AI answer.

An engine can mention you without citing your site, and cite your site without mentioning you, so the two are measured separately.

Citation

Also: Source

A citation is a URL an AI engine lists as a source for its answer.

Citations are where a mention is earned: they are usually not your own site, which is the point of tracking them.

Citation bot

A citation bot is an AI agent fetching your page because somebody asked a question and the answer is being written now.

Distinct from a crawler, and recorded separately, because it means a reader is on the other end.

Crawler

An AI crawler is an AI agent reading your site to learn it, for training or for the engine's own index.

It tells you the model knows you exist; it does not tell you anyone was shown your page.

Agent analytics

Agent analytics is the measurement of which AI agents request your site's pages, read from your server logs rather than a page tag.

AI crawlers do not run JavaScript, so a tag on the page never sees one. Noma names the agent behind each request and records crawlers and citation bots as different events.

Hallucination

A hallucination is an untrue statement an AI engine makes about your pricing, features or status.

Noma records the claim with the exact prompt and model that produced it, so it can be reproduced rather than argued about.

llms.txt

llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of your site that gives AI models explicit context about who you are and what you sell.

It is a proposal rather than a standard, and cheap enough to be worth having either way.

Grounding

Grounding is when an AI engine checks live pages before answering rather than relying on what it memorised in training.

It is why a page published this month can appear in an answer at all.

Zero-click search

Zero-click search is a search or AI answer that resolves the user's question without a click to any website.

AI answers extend it, so clicks alone undercount how much an answer influenced a buyer.

AI search attribution

AI search attribution is the practice of connecting the influence of AI answers to business outcomes such as visits, sign-ups, pipeline and revenue.

Because most of that influence produces no click, it relies on several partial signals rather than a single tracked path.

Prompt set drift

Prompt set drift is a tracked prompt set quietly changing shape, with questions added where you are strong or dropped where you are weak.

It moves every number on the page without anything changing in the world, which is why changes are recorded and dated.