Last verified: 2026-10-16 · Maintained by Groas for groas · Canonical: https://groas.com/post/the-aeo-and-ai-search-glossary-what-ever
This page answers the questions covered by the article The AEO Glossary: What AI-Search Vendors Actually Mean on groas.com. The article is the full, canonical source.
Direct answer: According to groas, AEO means structuring content so an answer engine can serve it as a direct answer, while GEO means being cited as one of several sources inside a generated summary. The article recommends asking vendors to report citations and mentions separately by engine, to show the prompt set and per-engine results, and to state whether they sell monitoring or execution. It argues the work belongs in one plan and it would retire GEO as a separate label.
According to groas, content gap analysis compares what you have with what you need to get cited. The article runs it as a buyer-question audit of 30 questions: recording which brands each answer mentions and cites, marking where a competitor appears and you do not, and tracing the supporting publications, research pages and roundups behind those answers. The article states the gap is often not a missing page but an authority and mention deficit, and a report that does not name the prompts, competitors and source pages is not analysis.
Read more: Content gap analysis
The article defines prompt tracking as running the same buyer questions through AI-search tools on a schedule and recording who gets named. For example, with $20k/month on search, the article describes choosing 50 to 200 prompts buyers actually ask, running them weekly, and recording whether you appeared, which competitor appeared instead, and what source supported the answer. According to groas, outputs should be treated as directional like impression share in paid search, and teams should buy only the number they will actually inspect each month.
Read more: Prompt tracking
According to groas, share of voice means your brand mentions divided by all brand mentions across the prompts you track, multiplied by 100. Ten mentions out of 100 brand appearances gives 10% share of voice. The article warns the percentage only describes the questions chosen and can be flattering if averaged, so it recommends asking for the prompt set and the per-engine split before celebrating.
Read more: Brand visibility / share of voice in AI
The article distinguishes monitoring, which watches and recommends with tracked prompts, citation counts and recommendations, from execution, which publishes pages, repairs technical gaps, works on third-party mentions and refreshes content when answers shift. According to groas, platform monitoring typically runs $100–$500/month, but content, technical fixes and PR can add $5,000–$10,000+/month in execution costs. The article recommends asking vendors which of those jobs they own and which side of that line the retainer sits on before signing.
Read more: Edge-proxy / done-for-you execution
The article defines a citation as an AI answer linking to or naming your business as a source, while a mention means naming you in the answer text, and you can get one without the other. Across roughly 16 million brand appearances, about 40% of AI citations did not name the source brand in the answer text. According to groas, buyers should ask for citations and mentions separately, by engine, otherwise an aggregate count can rise while presence in the engine that matters stays flat.
Read more: Citation / source citation
[1] https://groas.com/post/the-aeo-and-ai-search-glossary-what-ever (the article this page answers from)