GEO / AEO / LLMO Glossary: 40 AI search terms for quick comparison between Traditional Chinese and Chinese

GEO, AEO, and LLMO are often used as three fashionable terms for the same thing, but they are not. They each refer to a different layer of problems in AI search. Teams that mix terms often spend their efforts in the wrong place - for example, they are desperately stacking structured data, but no one checks whether their brand has been cited by ChatGPT. This dictionary explains the 40 most commonly misunderstood words clearly in Traditional Chinese, so that you can speak the same language when communicating with engineers, supervisors or agents.

Let’s first distinguish the three most confusing abbreviations

The fastest way to divide it is to look at the "object of optimization". SEO optimizes search engine rankings; AEO optimizes how the answer engine extracts your content; GEO is the largest umbrella, covering all brand appearances in generative answers; LLMO goes deeper into how the model understands you semantically. In practice, you won't just do one or the other, but you should be clear when communicating so that you won't treat "ranking dropped" and "AI doesn't cite me" as the same problem.

• "GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): a set of practices that allow brands to be quoted and mentioned in generative answers such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and AI Overview."
• "AEO (Answer Engine Optimization): Optimize for engines that directly give answers (such as Perplexity, voice assistants). The focus is on writing content into questions and answers that can be extracted cleanly."
• "LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization, Large Language Model Optimization): Focuses on the cognition of the model itself - which themes and semantics your brand is associated with in the eyes of the model."
• "SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Traditional page ranking optimization. GEO is built on it, but measures "citations" rather than "clicks." "
• "AI Overviews: The snippets generated by Google at the top of search results, which only label a few sources, are one of the largest sources of zero-click traffic."
• "SGE (Search Generative Experience): the predecessor name of AI Overview, old documents are still common."
• "Zero-click search: Users get answers on the results page or AI answers without clicking into the website. GEO strives for exposure in this scenario."
• "Answer Engine: A system that directly returns an answer instead of a list of links. Perplexity is a typical example."

How AI engines work: models and search terms

You don’t need to know how to train the model, but you do need to know how the answer is generated. Most of today's AI searches do not require models to answer from memory, but to retrieve a batch of web pages in real time and then generate them based on them - this architecture is called RAG. Understand this, and you will understand: Whether or not your content can be cited depends on whether your content has entered the batch of candidates to be retrieved.

• "LLM (Large Language Model): A model that is trained with massive amounts of text and can generate natural language. It is the bottom layer of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini."
• "RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation, retrieval-augmented generation): The model immediately retrieves external data and then generates it before answering. Most AI searches use it, which is why you have a chance to be cited."
• "Grounding: The model anchors the answer on verifiable external sources to reduce fabrication; being cited by grounding is equivalent to entering the answer."
• "Embedding (embedding vector): Convert text into numerical coordinates, allowing the machine to use semantic distance to determine relevance, instead of just comparing keywords."
• "Semantic search: Search methods that compare similar meanings rather than literal matches."
• "Token (word element): the smallest unit for the model to process text, one Chinese character has about one to two tokens."
• "Context window: The upper limit of tokens that the model can read at one time determines how much data it can reference at the same time."
• "Hallucination: The model confidently generates incorrect content. When a brand lacks an authoritative source, it is easier to be fooled into misinformation."
• "Fine-tuning: Retraining on an existing model using specific data to adjust the output style or knowledge."
• "Prompt (prompt word): The question or command input by the user determines the direction of model retrieval and generation."

Let AI read you: crawling, indexing and sourcing

• "GPTBot: OpenAI's crawler for ChatGPT. Blocking it in robots.txt is equivalent to giving up being referenced by ChatGPT."
• "ClaudeBot: Anthropic's web crawler, corresponding to Claude."
• "PerplexityBot: Perplexity crawler that crawls real-time sources."
• "Google-Extended: A wand that controls whether content can be used by generative products such as Gemini. It can be set separately in robots.txt."
• "llms.txt: A Markdown guide file specially written for AI placed in the root directory of the website, marking the content that is most wanted to be quoted."
• "robots.txt: A file that tells the crawler which pages can be crawled. The access rights of the AI crawler start from here."
• "Citation: The source link marked in the AI answer is the most direct result of GEO."
• "Structured data/Schema.org (Structured data): Use machine-readable tags to describe page content to help engines correctly understand and extract it."
• "Knowledge graph: A structure that connects entities and their relationships into a network. The engine uses it to determine what your brand is and who it is related to."
• "Entity: a node in the knowledge graph, such as a company or a product. Making the brand a clear entity is GEO's long-term goal."
• "E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness): Google's framework for evaluating content quality, and it is also an important reference for the engine to judge the credibility of the source."
• "Chunking: Cutting long content into smaller pieces for easier retrieval. Content with clear titles and self-sufficient paragraphs is more likely to be chopped cleanly."

Measuring Visibility: What Metrics You Should Track on a Regular basis

Visibility cannot be optimized unless measured first. Traditional SEO looks at rankings and clicks, while GEO looks at a completely different set of indicators. The focus is on whether you were mentioned in the AI's answer and how you were mentioned. Here are a few you should keep track of.

• "Share of Model/Share of Voice (model visibility ratio): Under a set of target prompt words, the proportion of brand mentions relative to competing products is the core KPI of GEO."
• "Prompt volume (prompt word coverage): The number of related questions tracked determines the representativeness of the sample."
• "Citation rate: The proportion of answers to a specific question that actually include a link to your website."
• "Sentiment (emotional tendency): The tone of AI when mentioning the brand is positive, neutral or negative."
• "Position in answer (position within the answer): The order in which the brand is mentioned in the generated answer. The higher it is, the greater its influence."
• "Passage retrieval: The engine retrieves a single paragraph rather than the entire page as material, so each paragraph should be able to stand alone."
• "Answer extraction: The engine intercepts a section from the content to answer the question directly. Those with a clear format have a higher success rate."
• "Prompt injection: A method of manipulating model behavior through malicious input. Please pay attention to content security."
• "Citation gap: The gap where you have content on a certain topic but are not cited by any AI answers is the place where audits should find out."
• "Brand Radar (visibility tracking): The practice of continuously monitoring the brand's visibility in each AI engine, turning the above indicators into a dashboard that can be viewed weekly."

The terminology will keep changing, but there is only one underlying question: when someone asks AI questions about your field, does your brand appear and how does it appear? Only by quantifying this matter can the rest of the optimization be directed.— Tenten GEO Consulting Team

From table lookup to action

A lookup table is just the starting point. The real gap is between what you think you have visibility and what AI actually says about you. If you want to know how many times your brand has been cited on ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity and who it lost to, you can book a 30-minute GEO diagnosis. We will run a snapshot using your real target prompt words and point out the three gaps that need to be filled on the spot.