Glossary of Terms: AI Visibility & Website Tech Optimization

A

Accessibility (Web Accessibility)
Practices that make a website usable for all users, including those with disabilities. For AI, accessibility elements (alt text, ARIA labels, semantic HTML) provide additional context that improves machine comprehension.

AI Crawlability
How easily AI systems (ChatGPT browsing, Perplexity, SGE, Copilot) can access, fetch, and parse website content.

AI Visibility
The degree to which a brand appears in AI-generated answers, summaries, recommendations, and citations across LLM-powered search and discovery platforms.

Alt Text
Text descriptions attached to images that help both screen readers and AI models understand visual content.

B

Bing Copilot Visibility
Optimisation techniques used to make content more discoverable and more frequently cited within Microsoft Copilot’s AI answers.

Breadcrumb Schema
Structured data that helps AIs understand your website’s hierarchy and user paths.

C

Canonical Tags
Signals indicating the preferred version of a page to avoid duplication and help AIs interpret source authority correctly.

Core Web Vitals
Google’s performance metrics — LCP, INP, CLS — that influence both user experience and AI ingestion reliability.

Crawl Budget
The number of pages a crawler (search engine or AI model) is willing or able to crawl on a site.

Crawlability
A website’s ability to be efficiently crawled by both traditional bots and AI browsing agents.

D

Data Structuring
The process of converting content into formats that machines can easily interpret (HTML hierarchy, schema markup, entity tags).

Duplicate Content
Similar or identical content across multiple URLs. Creates confusion for AI systems regarding which version to use.

E

Entity
A machine-readable representation of a person, brand, product, location, or concept — the core building block of AI understanding.

Entity-Based SEO
Optimising website content to reinforce machine-recognisable entities rather than keywords.

E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Signals AIs use to judge reliability.

F

FAQ Schema
Structured data that allows AI systems to recognise questions and answers explicitly.

First-Party Data
Content and information owned by a brand, which becomes a primary source for AI ingestion.

G

Google SGE (Search Generative Experience)
Google’s AI-powered search interface that generates summarised answers instead of displaying only traditional results.

Graph Relationships
Connections between entities used by AIs to contextualise concepts, products, and brands.

H

HTML Semantics
Using meaningful HTML elements (header, main, article, section) to help AIs understand content structure.

H1/H2/H3 Hierarchy
Heading structure that helps both users and AI models navigate the logical flow of a page.

I

Indexation
Whether a page is included in a search engine or AI crawler’s database.

Information Architecture (IA)
How website content is organised; critical for machine comprehension.

Ingestion (AI Ingestion)
The process of LLMs reading and interpreting website content to include it in their internal knowledge systems.

J

JavaScript Rendering
How a browser or crawler interprets JavaScript. Poor rendering blocks both search engines and AI models from accessing content.

JSON-LD
A structured data format used widely for schema markup.

K

Knowledge Graph
A structured representation of entities and their relationships. LLMs rely on these to understand brands and concepts.

Knowledge Graph Alignment
Ensuring your brand and product entities match external databases like Wikidata, Google, and industry graphs.

L

LLM Visibility
The extent to which a brand appears within answers generated by large language models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini).

Log File Analysis
Reviewing server logs to see how crawlers access your site and where they fail.

M

Machine-Readable Content
Content that’s formatted so AIs can easily extract meaning from it (e.g., schema, semantic HTML, labeled entities).

Metadata
Information about a webpage (title, description, canonical URL) used by AIs for interpretation.

N

NLP (Natural Language Processing)
The technology AIs use to understand human text. Websites must be structured in NLP-friendly ways to maximise visibility.

Navigation Structure
Menus, links, and structure that influence crawl paths.

O

Organization Schema
Structured data that identifies a brand, its details, and its digital presence to AI systems.

Orphan Pages
Pages not linked internally — often invisible to both crawlers and AIs.

P

Performance (Site Performance)
Speed, responsiveness, and stability. Slow sites reduce AI ingestion success.

Perplexity Visibility
Optimising for Perplexity’s browsing and summarisation behaviour.

Product Schema
Structured data that helps AIs understand product attributes (price, availability, reviews).

Q

Quality Signals
Indicators AIs use to assess trustworthiness: HTTPS, clean HTML, schema accuracy, consistent entity naming.

Q&A Schema
Structured data designed for question-answer scenarios.

R

Robots.txt
A file that tells crawlers which parts of your site they can or cannot access.

Review Schema
Structured data for ratings and reviews that enhances AI credibility signals.

S

Structured Data (Schema Markup)
Code that explains the meaning of website content to AIs.

Sitemap
A file that lists all important URLs for crawlers to follow.

Semantic HTML
Using HTML tags to convey meaning — essential for machine comprehension.

T

Technical SEO
Optimisation of a website’s backend to improve crawlability, structure, and machine-readability.

Trust Signals
Elements that tell AIs your site is reliable: HTTPS, metadata consistency, no broken links.

U

URL Structure
How URLs are formatted. Clean, logical URLs help AIs understand content hierarchy.

UX Signals
User-experience factors that indirectly influence AI visibility through performance and structure.

V

Visibility (AI Visibility)
How often your brand is surfaced by AI models in responses, citations, and summaries.

Validation (Schema Validation)
Testing schema markup to ensure AIs can read it without errors.

W

Website Architecture
How content is organised across templates, categories, and pages.

Wikidata Alignment
Ensuring your brand is linked to authoritative external data sources used by AI models.

X

XML Sitemap
A structured pipeline that shows crawlers all index-worthy pages on your site.

X-Robots-Tag
A header-level equivalent of meta robots, giving AIs instructions for indexing and crawling.

Y

YMYL (Your Money or Your Life)
Google’s category for sensitive content that requires higher trust signals; AIs treat these categories similarly.

Z

Zero-Friction Crawl Paths
Optimised site structures that remove barriers to AI and search engine crawling.

Zero-Duplication Architecture
A system where only one canonical version of each piece of content exists.

AI crawlability, AI discoverability, AI ingestion, AI visibility, AI-ready content, Accessibility optimisatio, Authority signals, Alt text optimisation, Bot crawl optimisation, Bing Copilot visibility, Breadcrumb schema, Browser rendering perform, Brand entity optimisation, Canonical tags, Crawl budget optimisation, Core Web Vitals, Content structure, Crawlability audit, Clean information archite, Customer intent signals, Data structuring, Duplicate content managem, Discovery optimisation, Dynamic rendering optimis, Data cleanliness for AI, Entity optimisation, Entity-based SEO, E-E-A-T signals, External knowledge graph, Error cleanup, FAQ schema, First-party data ingestio, Fast-loading performance, Findability optimisation, Future-proof technical SE, Google SGE optimisation, Graph relationships, GMB entity alignment, Global schema deployment, Generation-based search o, HTML semantics, H1/H2/H3 structure, High-trust technical sign, HTTP/HTTPS configuration, Headless CMS optimisation, Indexation optimisation, Information architecture, Internal linking optimisa, Ingestion readiness score, Image optimisation for AI, JavaScript rendering opti, JSON-LD schema, Journey-aligned mapping, Knowledge graph optimisat, Key entity mapping, Keyword-linked structured, Knowledge extraction read, LLM visibility, Loading speed optimisatio, Log file analysis, Lighthouse performance im, Link architecture, Machine-readable content, Metadata optimisation, Mobile performance, Markup validation, Model-friendly content en, Navigation structure, NLP-ready content, Name-entity consistency, Non-blocking JavaScript, Network performance optim, Organization schema, Open-graph optimisation, Orphan page cleanup, On-page technical structu, Optimised URL patterns, Performance optimisation, Perplexity visibility, Page speed improvements, Product schema, Parsing optimisation, Quality signals for AI, Queryless search optimisa, Question-answer schema, Quick loading times, Robots.txt optimisation, Review schema, Render path optimisation, Rufus AI visibility, Resource compression, Structured data optimisat, Site architecture audit, Semantic HTML, Sitemap optimisation, Schema validation, Search generative experie, Technical SEO audit, Trust signals, Topic cluster architectur, Technical hygiene, Tag cleanup and standardi, URL structure, User-friendly accessibili, Unstructured-to-structure, UX performance signals, Visibility optimisation, Validation of HTML/Schema, Voice search visibility, Vital signs (CWV), Website performance, Web accessibility, Web crawl diagnostics, Wikidata entity alignment, Web rendering optimisatio, XML sitemap, X-robots-tag configuratio, Cross-site entity consist, Yield optimisation (conve, Zero-friction crawl paths, Zero-party data structuri, Zero-duplication architec, YMYL technical complianceFrancesca Tabor