Glossary
The vocabulary used across this site's research, defined once by Joe Ashta. Definitions describe how the terms are used here; where a term is also a product name, the owner is credited on the leaderboard's disclaimers.
- SEO (search engine optimization)
- The practice of earning visibility in traditional search engine results: ranking higher in the list of links Google, Bing, and other engines return. The foundation that AEO and GEO build on.
- AEO (answer engine optimization)
- Focused on being featured as the answer: named as a recommendation, surfaced as a result a buyer acts on. AEO targets mentions and recommendations, the brand visibility and revenue layer. The counterpart to SEO for a world where the result is an answer instead of a list of links.
- GEO (generative engine optimization)
- The broader discipline of earning visibility across the entire generative process: citations, mentions, grounding, and recommendations. Academic usage leans GEO, practitioner usage leans AEO. GEO and AEO are correlated, but AEO is more specific in its desired outcomes.
- Mention
- The business named in the answer text itself, with or without a link. Mentions are what a buyer actually sees. They cannot be bought from a data vendor; they have to be measured directly.
- Citation
- A link to a website that an AI platform displays as a source for a generated answer. Citations are countable at scale by SEO data vendors, which makes them the most available visibility metric. They are also a proxy: a citation proves the platform read the site. It does not prove a recommendation.
- Recommendation
- When an AI system names a business as something the user should consider, hire, or buy from. The highest-value form of visibility: a direct endorsement in the answer rather than a footnote. What AEO ultimately optimizes for.
- Grounding
- The retrieval step where an AI system pulls external content into its context before generating an answer. A grounded answer draws on real sources rather than parametric memory alone. Being in the grounding set is a prerequisite for citation and often for recommendation, but it is invisible to the end user.
- Mention rate
- The share of AI answers in which an entity is named. The core metric of measured visibility work. It is a percentage, so it can never be compared against a citation count.
- Vendor-reported vs. measured
- Two sources of visibility numbers. Vendor-reported: a data company (here, Ahrefs) crawls AI answers at scale and reports citation counts: broad, cheap, third-party, and a sample you do not control. Measured: visibility observed directly in the platforms' own answers. Narrower and costlier, and the only way to know what a specific buyer question returns.
- AI Overviews
- Google's AI-generated summary shown above standard search results, with source links.
- AI Mode
- Google's conversational search tab, a full chat-style answer experience inside Google Search. Distinct from AI Overviews.
- DR (Domain Rating)
- Ahrefs' 0–100 score for the strength of a website's backlink profile. A traditional SEO metric, shown on the leaderboard for context. It measures link authority rather than AI visibility.
- Organic traffic
- Ahrefs' estimate of a website's monthly visits from unpaid Google search results. An estimate built from ranking data rather than the site's own analytics.
- Am Law 100
- The annual ranking of the 100 highest-grossing US law firms published by The American Lawyer. "Am Law 100" and "The American Lawyer" are trademarks of ALM Global, LLC, used here descriptively.
- Leaderboard segments
- The four groups on the BigLaw GEO Leaderboard: Big Law (US firms of Am Law 100 scale), Global (internationally headquartered firms with major US practices), Mid-Law (selected mid-size and regional firms), and Boutique (elite litigation boutiques).