Guides/Glossary
AI search, PR and SEO, defined.
Plain definitions of the terms behind AI citations, press releases and SEO: GEO, AEO, AI Overviews, llms.txt, Domain Rating, dofollow links, newswires and more.
A
- AI citationAn AI citation is a link or named source that an AI assistant like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews shows alongside its answer.
- AI hallucinationAn AI hallucination is a confident but false statement from an AI model, such as a made-up feature, price, founder or source for a real company.
- AI ModeAI Mode is Google Search's conversational search experience, which answers complex questions with AI and links out to sources across the web.
- AI OverviewsAI Overviews are AI-generated summaries Google shows at the top of some search results, with links to the web pages they draw from.
- AI referral trafficAI referral traffic is visits to your website from people clicking links in AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot or Claude.
- Anchor textAnchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link. Search engines use it as a clue to what the linked page is about.
B
- BacklinkA backlink is a link from another website to yours. Search engines treat relevant backlinks from trusted sites as a sign your page is worth ranking.
- BingbotBingbot is Microsoft's crawler for the Bing search index, which powers Bing, Copilot and DuckDuckGo results and is used by other AI search tools.
- BoilerplateA boilerplate is the short, standard "About" paragraph at the end of a press release that describes the company, reused in every release.
- Brand mentionA brand mention is any reference to your company or product by name on another website, article, forum or social post, with or without a link.
C
- Canonical URLA canonical URL is the preferred version of a page when the same content exists at several addresses, set with a rel="canonical" link element.
- ChatGPT-UserChatGPT-User is the user agent OpenAI uses when ChatGPT visits a page because a user asked, for example to open a link they pasted in a chat.
- ClaudeBotClaudeBot is Anthropic's crawler for collecting public web content to train Claude. Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User handle search and user requests.
D
- DatelineA dateline is the city, region and date at the start of a press release's first paragraph, showing where and when the news was issued.
- Distribution reportA distribution report lists where a press release was published after distribution, usually with links to each placement, outlet logos and potential reach.
- Dofollow linkA dofollow link is a normal link without a nofollow, sponsored or ugc attribute, which search engines may use to pass ranking value to the linked page.
- Domain Authority (DA)Domain Authority (DA) is Moz's 1–100 score predicting how likely a website is to rank in search results, based on its link profile. Google does not use it.
- Domain Rating (DR)Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs' 0–100 score of the strength of a website's backlink profile, based on the unique sites linking to it with followed links.
E
- E-E-A-TE-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, the qualities Google's quality rater guidelines use to judge content.
- Earned mediaEarned media is coverage you did not pay for: articles a journalist chose to write, reviews, mentions and social shares, as opposed to paid or owned media.
- EmbargoAn embargo is a request that journalists not publish news before a set date and time, giving them time to prepare a story in advance.
- EntityIn SEO, an entity is a distinct thing, such as a company, person, product or place, that search engines and AI models understand as a concept, not a word.
F
G
- Google-ExtendedGoogle-Extended is a robots.txt token that controls whether Google may use your content to train and ground Gemini models. It does not affect Google Search.
- GPTBotGPTBot is OpenAI's web crawler that collects content to train its AI models. Blocking it does not remove you from ChatGPT search results.
- GroundingGrounding is connecting an AI model's answer to verifiable sources, such as live search results, so it states facts it can back up rather than guesses.
I
- IndexingIndexing is when a search engine stores a page it has crawled in its database, so the page can appear in search results and in AI answers built on them.
- Inverted pyramidThe inverted pyramid is a news writing structure that puts the most important facts first and less important details after, so a story can be cut from the end.
K
- Knowledge GraphThe Knowledge Graph is Google's database of entities (people, companies, places, things) and the facts and relationships between them, used across Search.
- Knowledge panelA knowledge panel is the box of facts Google shows about a well-known entity, such as a company or person, usually to the right of search results on desktop.
L
- Large language model (LLM)A large language model (LLM) is an AI model trained on huge amounts of text to understand and generate language, such as GPT, Claude or Gemini.
- Launch directoryA launch directory is a website that lists new startups and products, such as Product Hunt, BetaList or Uneed, often with voting, a launch date and a backlink.
- Link equityLink equity, often called link juice, is the ranking value a link passes from one page to another, depending on the linking page's authority and relevance.
M
- Media contactThe media contact is the person journalists should reach for questions about a press release, listed with name, email and often phone at the end.
- Media listA media list is a curated list of journalists, editors, podcasters and creators who cover your topic, used for pitching stories directly.
N
- NewswireA newswire is a service that distributes press releases to news websites, media outlets, journalists and financial platforms for a fee.
- Nofollow linkA nofollow link carries rel="nofollow", a hint asking search engines not to pass ranking value or endorse the linked page. Google treats it as a hint, not a rule.
O
P
- PerplexityBotPerplexityBot is Perplexity's crawler that indexes web pages so they can be found and cited in Perplexity's answers. Perplexity says it is not used for training.
- Potential reachPotential reach is the combined audience of the outlets a press release appears on: how many people could see it, not how many will read it.
- Press kitA press kit is a page or folder with everything a journalist needs to cover a company: logos, screenshots, founder photos, facts, boilerplate and contact.
- Press releaseA press release is an official announcement written in news style by a company, distributed to media and news sites to share news such as a launch or funding.
Q
R
- Referring domainA referring domain is a unique website that links to yours. Ten links from one site count as ten backlinks but only one referring domain.
- Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is a technique where an AI model fetches relevant documents first, then writes its answer based on them.
- robots.txtrobots.txt is a text file at the root of a website that tells crawlers which pages they may or may not fetch, by user agent, under the Robots Exclusion Protocol.
S
- sameAssameAs is a schema.org property that lists other URLs representing the same entity, such as your LinkedIn, Crunchbase, GitHub or Wikidata pages.
- SERPA SERP, or search engine results page, is the page a search engine shows for a query: organic results, ads, AI Overviews, snippets, maps and other features.
- Share of voiceShare of voice is how often your brand appears compared with competitors, across ads, search results, media or, increasingly, AI answers.
- Sponsored linkrel="sponsored" marks a link as paid, sponsored or part of an affiliate deal. Google asks sites to use it, or nofollow, on any link that was paid for.
- Structured dataStructured data is code, usually JSON-LD using the schema.org vocabulary, that describes a page's content in a machine-readable way: a product, an article, an FAQ.
- SyndicationSyndication is when the same content is republished on several sites. A syndicated press release appears word for word on many news sites at once.
U
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