AEO — Answer Engine Optimisation

The practice of optimising your website and online presence so that AI-powered answer engines — ChatGPT, Google's AI Overview, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot — give your business as a direct answer to relevant queries. Unlike traditional SEO which aims for a high position in a list of results, AEO aims for your business to be the answer, not a result.

A business that is well-optimised for answer engines may be recommended by name when someone asks an AI "who is the best [trade] in [town]" — even if that person never visits a search results page. See also: GEO, AI Overview, Schema Markup.

AI Crawler

An automated programme operated by an AI company that visits websites to gather information used to train AI models or provide AI search results. Major AI crawlers include GPTBot (OpenAI / ChatGPT), ClaudeBot (Anthropic / Claude), PerplexityBot (Perplexity), and Googlebot (Google, including AI Overview).

AI crawlers read your website's text, structured data, llms.txt file, and robots.txt permissions. What they find — or do not find — directly affects whether the AI they serve will recommend your business.

Blocking or not accounting for AI crawlers in your robots.txt file means your business is invisible to those AI systems, regardless of how good your website is.

AI Overview

Google's AI-generated answer that appears at the top of search results for a growing proportion of queries. Instead of showing ten links, Google's AI Overview presents a synthesised answer drawn from multiple sources, often with a short list of recommended businesses or resources.

AI Overviews currently appear on roughly 40% of all UK searches. For local business queries — "best plumber near me," "solicitor in Leicester for employment law" — appearing in an AI Overview is the equivalent of ranking number one, but with greater prominence and no competition from other links on the same screen.

Appearing in AI Overviews requires correct schema markup, consistent citations, and a verified Google Business Profile at minimum.

AIO — AI Overview Optimisation

The practice of optimising a website and online presence specifically to appear in Google's AI Overview — the AI-generated answer that appears at the top of Google search results for a growing proportion of queries.

AI Overview replaces the traditional "position one" result for many searches with a single synthesised answer. A business that appears in an AI Overview is shown to every searcher who triggers that result — without them needing to click a link or visit a search results page.

AIO optimisation focuses on the specific signals Google's AI system uses to select which businesses to feature: LocalBusiness schema markup, a verified and fully populated Google Business Profile, FAQPage schema on question-and-answer content, citation consistency across directories, and HTTPS security. Of the three disciplines, AIO is the most directly tied to Google's systems and the fastest to show measurable results — Google re-crawls and updates AI Overview data continuously.

See also: GEO, AEO, Schema Markup, Google Business Profile.

AI-Ready Architecture

A structural standard for websites that includes dedicated files (llms.txt, robots.txt) designed to help Large Language Models crawl, understand, and cite a brand accurately.

AI Search Visibility

The degree to which your business is findable, identifiable, and recommendable by AI-powered search and recommendation systems. A business with high AI search visibility has correct schema markup, an llms.txt file, consistent citations, explicit AI crawler permissions in robots.txt, and content that AI engines can cite when answering questions.

A business with low AI search visibility has few or none of these things and is unlikely to appear in AI-generated answers regardless of how good its traditional SEO is.

AI search visibility is measured separately from Google rankings — a business can rank well on Google and still be invisible to AI search.

Answer Engine

A system that provides a direct answer to a question rather than a list of links. Traditional search engines (Google, Bing) return lists. Answer engines — including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google's AI Overview, and voice assistants like Siri and Alexa — return answers.

The distinction matters because the commercial consequences are different. With a list of links, your business competes with nine others on the same page. With an answer engine, the answer either includes your business or it does not.

Remember: There is no position two.

BreadcrumbList Schema

A schema markup type that describes the navigational hierarchy of your website pages. For example: Home > Services > Boiler Repair. BreadcrumbList schema helps search engines and AI systems understand the structure and depth of your website content, and it generates the breadcrumb trail that appears below your page title in Google search results.

For multi-page websites covering multiple services or locations, BreadcrumbList schema is important for establishing topical structure.

Citation

In the context of AI and local search visibility, a citation is any online mention of your business name, address, and phone number — individually or in combination. Citations appear on directories (Yell, Thomson Local, FreeIndex), review platforms (Trustpilot, Checkatrade, Google), industry-specific platforms, and social media profiles.

AI engines use citations to verify that multiple independent sources describe the same real business at the same location.

The more consistent and numerous your citations, the more confidently an AI can identify and recommend your business. Inconsistent citations reduce AI confidence and hurt visibility. See also: NAP Consistency.

ClaudeBot

The web crawler operated by Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude AI assistant. ClaudeBot visits websites to gather information used to train and update Claude's knowledge. Websites that block ClaudeBot via robots.txt, or that do not have an llms.txt file, are less likely to be accurately represented in Claude's knowledge base and less likely to be recommended by Claude when users ask questions about local businesses.

Explicitly allowing ClaudeBot in your robots.txt file is one of the basic steps in AI visibility setup.

Core Web Vitals

Google's framework for measuring website page experience, focusing on three metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (how fast the main content loads), Interaction to Next Paint (how quickly the page responds to user input), and Cumulative Layout Shift (how stable the visual layout is as the page loads). Core Web Vitals are a Google ranking factor. They are not a direct AI visibility factor in the same way schema markup is, but a slow, unstable website reduces the quality of the data AI crawlers can gather.

Practically: a fast, stable website is better for both SEO and AI visibility than a slow one.

Crawler Transparency

The measure of how easily an AI agent (such as GPTBot or Google-Extended) can parse a site's core logic without encountering "Spaghetti Code" or technical blockers.

DefinedTerm / DefinedTerm Schema

A schema markup type used to identify and describe defined terms on a page — exactly as used in a glossary. DefinedTerm schema tells AI engines that a piece of content is a definition, what term it defines, and what the definition says. Glossary pages with DefinedTerm schema are particularly valuable for AEO because AI engines actively use definition content when answering questions.

A business whose website accurately defines "what is schema markup" or "what is GEO" is more likely to be cited as an authority on those topics — which in turn builds topical authority in the AI's knowledge base.

Entity

In AI and search engine terminology, an entity is any well-defined, real-world thing that can be identified consistently across multiple sources: a person, a business, a place, a product. Search engines and AI engines organise knowledge around entities rather than just keywords. Your business is an entity. For an AI to recommend your business, it needs to be able to identify it as a coherent, consistent entity — the same business named, located, and described the same way across your website, your Google Business Profile, and your directory citations.

Schema markup and consistent NAP are the primary tools for building entity recognition.

FAQ Schema / FAQPage Schema

A schema markup type applied to pages or sections of a website that contain frequently asked questions and their answers.

FAQPage schema is one of the highest-value schema types for AEO specifically because AI engines use FAQ content directly when generating answers to user questions. When an AI system is answering "how long does an employment tribunal take," it looks for authoritative, clearly structured content that answers that exact question.

A solicitor's website with correctly marked-up FAQ schema is directly in the running to be cited. A solicitor's website with a FAQ section but no FAQPage schema is not, even if the content is identical.

GEO — Generative Engine Optimisation

The discipline of making your business visible to AI-powered search engines — systems that generate answers rather than returning lists of links.

GEO encompasses the full range of technical and content work required to be found, verified, and recommended by AI engines: schema markup, llms.txt, robots.txt AI crawler permissions, citation consistency, content strategy for AI citation, and Google Business Profile optimisation. GEO is the successor discipline to SEO — it does not replace traditional SEO but extends it with a technical layer specifically required for AI visibility.

See also: AEO, Schema Markup, llms.txt.

Google Business Profile (GBP)

The free business listing provided by Google, appearing in Google Maps and in the local results panel in Google Search.

A verified, fully populated Google Business Profile is one of the most important factors in both local SEO and AI visibility.

Google's AI Overview uses GBP data heavily when making local business recommendations. Key fields that affect AI visibility include: business name, primary and secondary categories, services list, business description, opening hours, and verified address.

Reviews on your GBP are used by Google as a trust signal when deciding whether to recommend your business.

GPTBot

The web crawler operated by OpenAI, used to gather information for ChatGPT and other OpenAI products. GPTBot visits websites and reads their content, structured data, and llms.txt files.

Websites that explicitly allow GPTBot in their robots.txt file, and that have an accurate llms.txt file, are more likely to be accurately represented in ChatGPT's knowledge and more likely to be recommended when ChatGPT users ask questions about local businesses. Blocking GPTBot — intentionally or by default — means your business is effectively invisible to ChatGPT.

JSON-LD

JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data. The format in which schema markup is most commonly written and the format recommended by Google. JSON-LD schema markup is placed as a script block in the head section of a webpage. It is invisible to human visitors but fully readable by search engines and AI crawlers.

The advantage of JSON-LD over other schema formats is that it is clean, self-contained, and easy to update without touching the page's visible content. When I generate schema for a client, it is delivered as a clean JSON-LD block ready to install.

Knowledge Graph

A structured database of entities and the relationships between them, used by search engines and AI systems to organise and retrieve information.

When your business is represented as a verified entity in a knowledge graph, it can be recommended in answer to a wide range of related queries.

Building your presence in AI knowledge graphs is one of the long-term goals of GEO and AEO — achieved through consistent, verified signals across schema markup, Google Business Profile, citations and content.

Large Language Model (LLM)

The type of AI technology underlying systems like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. A large language model is trained on vast quantities of text and learns to generate human-like text in response to prompts and questions.

When a person asks ChatGPT "who is the best electrician in Coventry," the LLM uses its training data — including information gathered by AI crawlers from websites across the internet — to generate an answer.

The quality and accuracy of that answer depends in part on the quality of the structured information your website provides. llms.txt takes its name from LLM.

llms.txt

A plain-text file placed at the root of a website (yourdomain.co.uk/llms.txt) that provides a direct, machine-readable description of the business for AI systems. It contains the business name, description, services, location, contact information, and any related entity information.

The llms.txt convention was proposed in 2024 and is increasingly adopted as standard practice for AI visibility.

Its purpose is to reduce ambiguity for AI crawlers — rather than having an AI infer what a business does from reading general website content, llms.txt states it explicitly. See also: AI Crawler, GEO, robots.txt.

Local SEO

The practice of optimising a website and online presence to rank well in location-specific search queries — "plumber in Northampton," "solicitor near me," "best restaurant in Leicester."

Local SEO has traditionally focused on Google. AI visibility now adds a parallel requirement: the same business signals that support strong local SEO also form the foundation of AI search visibility.

A business with strong local SEO has a head start on AI visibility. But the AI-specific technical layer — schema, llms.txt, AI crawler permissions — is additional to and distinct from traditional local SEO work.

NAP Consistency

Name, Address, Phone. The three pieces of business identity information that must be consistent across every online location where your business appears.

AI engines cross-reference business information across multiple sources to verify identity and establish confidence. If your business appears under slightly different names, addresses, or phone numbers across different platforms, the AI sees multiple slightly different entities and cannot confidently conclude they are the same business. The result is reduced recommendation confidence and lower AI visibility. NAP consistency means the same name, the same address (including formatting), and the same phone number, everywhere your business appears.

PerplexityBot

The web crawler operated by Perplexity AI, used to gather information for Perplexity's AI search engine.

Perplexity is a fast-growing AI search tool that provides answers with citations — it names the sources it draws from when generating answers.

Being cited by Perplexity is a direct form of AI-driven visibility, as the business name and website link appear alongside the AI-generated answer.

PerplexityBot should be explicitly allowed in your robots.txt file.

Rich Results

Enhanced search result listings that display additional information directly in Google's search results page, before the user clicks.

Rich results include star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, price ranges, opening hours, and event information. They are generated from schema markup.

A business with correctly formatted LocalBusiness schema and FAQPage schema is eligible for rich results.

Rich results consistently achieve higher click-through rates than standard listings and correlate with improved AI Overview eligibility.

robots.txt

A text file placed at the root of your website (yourdomain.co.uk/robots.txt) that tells web crawlers which pages or sections of your site they may access.

Originally designed for search engine crawlers like Googlebot, robots.txt now also controls access for AI crawlers. A correctly configured robots.txt file for AI visibility should explicitly allow the major AI crawlers: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Googlebot.

Many websites have robots.txt files set up years ago that do not mention AI crawlers — meaning those crawlers may be blocked by default rules.

See also: llms.txt, AI Crawler.

Schema Markup

Structured code, written in JSON-LD format and placed in the head of a webpage, that describes the content of that page to search engines and AI systems using a standardised vocabulary (Schema.org).

For a local business, schema markup identifies the business name, type, address, phone number, opening hours, area served, and services — all in a structured format that machines can read directly without having to interpret prose.

Schema markup is the single most impactful technical change most small businesses can make for AI visibility. See also: JSON-LD, Schema.org, FAQPage Schema.

Schema.org

The shared vocabulary used to write schema markup, developed jointly by Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex and launched in 2011.

Schema.org defines hundreds of entity types (LocalBusiness, Person, Product, Event, Article, and many more) and the properties relevant to each type.

All major search engines and AI systems use Schema.org as their standard for interpreting structured data.

Using Schema.org types correctly — choosing the most specific applicable type, populating all relevant properties — is the difference between schema markup that works and schema markup that does not.

sameAs

A property within schema markup that links your website entity to the same entity on other platforms. For example: your website's Organisation or LocalBusiness schema can include sameAs links pointing to your Google Business Profile URL, your Companies House entry, your Trustpilot page, and your Checkatrade listing.

When AI engines see sameAs links, they understand that multiple sources are describing the same real-world entity — which increases confidence in your identity and increases the likelihood of recommendation. sameAs is one of the most commonly omitted schema properties and one of the most valuable for entity verification.

Structured Data

Any data presented in a standardised, organised format that machines can read and process directly, as opposed to unstructured data like general website text. Schema markup is the primary form of structured data on websites.

AI engines use structured data extensively because it removes ambiguity — structured data says explicitly what something is, rather than leaving it to the machine to interpret.

The absence of structured data on a website is one of the main reasons businesses are invisible to AI search.

Topical Authority

The degree to which a website is recognised as an authoritative source on a particular subject.

A website with high topical authority has multiple pages addressing different aspects of a topic, receives citations from other relevant sources, and is consistently identified by AI and search engines as a reliable reference. Topical authority matters for AI visibility because AI engines prefer to recommend — and cite — sources they have identified as authoritative.

Building topical authority requires substantive, accurate, well-structured content that addresses the questions your customers actually ask, combined with the correct structured data signals.

Voice Search

Search queries made via voice assistants — Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, Cortana.

Voice search queries are typically phrased as natural language questions: "Who is the best electrician near me?" rather than "electrician Northampton." Voice search results are overwhelmingly drawn from AI-interpreted structured data and Google Business Profile information.

A business with correct schema markup, a verified GBP, and consistent citations is significantly more likely to be the answer when someone asks a voice assistant for a local business recommendation.

Voice search is one of the fastest-growing categories of local search and one of the clearest demonstrations of why AI visibility matters: a voice assistant gives one answer, and there is no second result.