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Howseen Academy · Glossary
GEO glossary, in plain words
Every term used in the Howseen Academy, explained in one or two sentences, with a link to the lesson that goes deeper.
By Raphaël Aubry, founder of Howseen AI · Updated How to use it
How should you use this glossary?
Look up a word when a lesson or a report uses it. Each definition is short, written for someone who does not work in SEO, and links to the lesson that explains it in depth.
Definitions of crawlers and Google features follow the official documentation: OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI crawlers, Google Search Central, AI features and your website and Google Search Central, Google's common crawlers (Google-Extended). Numbers come from the Howseen study of 5,331 AI answers and from Pew Research Center (July 2025), where 18% of Google searches showed an AI summary.
“Under the hood, AI Mode uses our query fan-out technique, breaking down your question into subtopics and issuing a multitude of queries simultaneously on your behalf.”
AI answer engine
Any tool that answers a question with a written answer instead of a list of links: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode.
AI Mode
A conversational search tab in Google that answers with AI and links to its sources. It can run many searches for one question. See lesson 1.4.
AI Overviews
The AI summary shown at the top of a normal Google search. In our data it cited YouTube in 45.0% of its answers.
AI visibility
How often AI answers name your brand on the questions you track, in %. See lesson 2.2.
Action Plan
The Howseen page that turns your gaps into ranked actions (Technical, Content, Off-page), each with steps and points. See lesson 4.6.
Autopilot
A Howseen setting that publishes your planned articles to your connected website by itself. Off, articles stay as drafts.
Buyer question (prompt)
The exact question a potential customer asks an AI before choosing a product. See lesson 2.1.
Citation (source)
A link to a web page that an AI shows next to its answer. It tells you which pages the AI read. See lesson 1.3.
Content Plan
The Howseen calendar of articles, one per buyer question you should win, where you generate, edit and publish them.
Content Refresh
The Howseen tool that rewrites an existing page so AI can find and quote it, keeping its address.
Crawler (bot)
A program that fetches web pages for a search engine or an AI company, for example OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Googlebot.
E-E-A-T
Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness: the way Google describes helpful content. Google says trust matters most. See lesson 3.3.
Fan-out query
One of the several searches an AI runs behind a single question. A question about price and region can become three or four searches.
GEO
Generative Engine Optimization: the work of getting your brand named and cited in AI answers. See What is GEO?
GEO score
In Howseen, a score out of 100 built from three levers: Technical, Content and Off-page.
Google-Extended
A robots.txt setting that controls whether Google may use your content for Gemini. Google says it does not affect your inclusion in Google Search.
Grounding
When an AI bases its answer on pages it fetched at the moment of the question, instead of only on what it learned in training.
Indexing
When a search engine stores a page so it can show it. Google shows only indexed pages in AI Overviews and AI Mode.
IndexNow
An open protocol that lets a website tell search engines like Bing that a page is new or changed.
llms.txt
A proposed plain-text file at the root of a site that points AI agents to its most useful pages. Cheap hygiene, not a ranking lever.
Mention
Your brand name written inside an AI answer. It is what the buyer reads.
Off-page
Everything that happens on other sites: lists, reviews, forums, videos, press. Often where an AI answer comes from.
Position
Your average rank among the brands named in an answer. 1 means you are named first.
robots.txt
A small file at the root of your site that tells crawlers which pages they may fetch. See lesson 3.1.
Search Console
Google's free tool for site owners: indexing, search queries, clicks. See lesson 4.2.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Microsoft's free tool for site owners on Bing, with URL submission. See lesson 4.3.
Sentiment
How positively an AI describes your brand when it names you. In Howseen, a score out of 100 on the Pro and Business plans.
Structured data (schema)
Code in a standard format (often JSON-LD) that states facts about a page, such as your organization or your FAQ.
Training data
The snapshot of text an AI model learned from. It changes slowly, unlike answers built from live search.
Questions, answered
What is the difference between SEO and GEO?+
SEO works to rank a page in a list of links. GEO works to get your brand named inside AI answers. SEO basics, like being indexed, are the floor of GEO.
What is a prompt in GEO?+
A buyer question tracked across AI engines: the exact question a potential customer asks before choosing a product.
What is the difference between a mention and a citation?+
A mention is your brand named in the answer text. A citation is a link to a page the AI read. You can have one without the other.
What is a fan-out query?+
One of the several searches an AI runs behind a single question. Google says AI Mode breaks a question into subtopics and runs many searches at once.
Is llms.txt required for GEO?+
No. It is a proposal that can help agents find your key pages. It is cheap to add, but it is not a ranking lever.
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