Plain-English definitions for the terms that come up in AI search optimization, attribution, and B2B pipeline work, written to be quoted, not just read.
An AI citation is any time a generative AI names, quotes, or links your source in its answer. Think of it as the AI-search version of a Google ranking, except sometimes there's no link at all, just your idea in someone else's words.
AEOAEO is the older, wider category GEO grew out of: optimizing for any answer surface, not just generative AI. Featured snippets, voice assistants, and AI summaries all count.
GEOHow confidently can an AI system tell who or what your page is actually about? Consistent naming, explicit definitions, and structured data all feed into this, and it's a bigger deal than most people assume.
AEOThat highlighted box above Google's normal results, pulled straight from a page and shown with a source link, usually for a question-shaped search.
AttributionFirst-touch hands 100% of the credit to whatever brought someone in the door first. Last-touch hands it all to whatever happened right before they converted. Both ignore everything in between.
GEOGEO is what you do to get ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews to actually name your brand when someone asks a question you could answer. Not ranking a link. Being the thing the AI quotes.
GEOCan the bots that feed AI models (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, and friends) actually read your page? That's crawlability, and it's governed by robots.txt, response codes, and whether your content needs JavaScript to show up.
AttributionDeciding which touchpoints (an ad, a blog post, an email, a referral) get credit when someone actually converts. Sounds simple. It's the thing marketing teams argue about most.
Funnel & MQLA lead who's shown enough interest (downloaded something, signed up for a webinar, kept coming back to the site) to be worth sales' attention, but who hasn't been vetted yet.
Funnel & MQLA lead sales has personally vetted and decided is worth chasing, usually against something like BANT (budget, authority, need, timeline) or whatever version of that your team runs.
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