Glossary
AI visibility glossary
The essential terms to understand how your brand appears — or doesn't — in the answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.
AI Mode
AI Mode is Google's search mode that replaces the classic list of results with an answer written by an AI, similar to what ChatGPT would produce. It may cite brands, compare them, recommend one — or cite none at all.
See the definitionBrand mention (in AI)
A brand mention in AI refers to a conversational assistant — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity — citing your company, product, or name when answering a question, even if no one typed your name into the prompt.
See the definitionGenerative answer
A generative answer is text produced by an artificial intelligence in response to a question, phrased sentence by sentence rather than served as a list of results. It's the format used by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Mode.
See the definitionAI hallucination
An AI hallucination is false or invented information that an artificial intelligence presents as fact, with the same confidence as accurate information. Applied to a brand, this can concern its activity, pricing, leadership, or location.
See the definitionAI visibility
AI visibility refers to the presence, frequency, and quality of a brand's citations in the answers of conversational artificial intelligences — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity — when a user asks a question related to its industry.
See the definitionCitation frequency
Citation frequency is the proportion of test questions for which an artificial intelligence mentions a given brand in its answer. For example: cited in 6 out of 20 questions asked to ChatGPT about a given industry.
See the definitionPosition in an AI answer
Position in an AI answer refers to the rank at which a brand is cited when an artificial intelligence mentions several in the same answer — for example, cited first among three recommended solutions, or mentioned last after competitors.
See the definitionAI recommendation
An AI recommendation is when a conversational assistant explicitly advises the user toward a brand — beyond a simple mention — in response to a question like "what would you recommend for..." or "what's the best option for...".
See the definitionBrand sentiment in AI
Brand sentiment in AI refers to the tone — positive, neutral, or negative — an artificial intelligence uses when mentioning a brand, independent of the simple fact of being cited.
See the definitionShare of citation among competitors
Share of citation among competitors measures, across the same set of questions asked to an AI, the proportion of citations that go to your brand compared to those going to your direct competitors.
See the definitionPrompt
A prompt is the text — question or instruction — submitted to an artificial intelligence to get an answer. It's the starting point of every interaction with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity.
See the definitionAI awareness
AI awareness refers to an artificial intelligence "knowing" a brand — meaning it holds information about it in its training memory or via web search — independent of its spontaneous citation frequency on non-branded questions.
See the definition