Glossary
Grounded definitions for AI visibility, agentic commerce, ecommerce operations, and product feeds. Each term links to a deeper page with a plain-language explanation, the mechanics behind it, and sources.
Merchant
A business or person that sells goods or services, online or offline.
Read definitionDTC / D2C (Direct-to-Consumer)
A business model where a brand sells straight to shoppers, skipping wholesalers and retailers.
Read definitionProduct Catalog
The structured list of everything a merchant sells, including price, images, and descriptions for each item.
Read definitionSKU (Stock Keeping Unit)
A unique code assigned to one specific version of a product so a business can track it in inventory.
Read definitionProduct Variant
A version of a product that differs by an option like size or color but shares the same base product listing.
Read definitionProduct Attribute
A specific characteristic of a product, such as color, size, or material, stored as a labeled data field.
Read definitionPrompt
The question or instruction a person types or speaks into an AI system.
Read definitionAI Visibility
Visibility measured specifically inside AI-generated answers rather than traditional search results.
Read definitionAI Brand Mention
Any instance where an AI-generated answer names a brand, whether or not it includes a link.
Read definitionAI Citation
A source link an AI answer includes to back up part of what it says.
Read definitionMention Status
Whether a brand appears in an AI answer as a plain mention, a linked citation, or not at all.
Read definitionCitation Rate
The percentage of relevant AI answers on a topic that include a citation at all, regardless of source.
Read definitionCitation Usage Rate
How often an AI-generated answer includes a clickable source link rather than an unsourced claim.
Read definitionCitation Domain Type
The category of website an AI cites as a source, such as a news outlet, retailer, or forum.
Read definitionCitation Page Type
The category of page an AI cites, such as a product page, blog post, or comparison article.
Read definitionCitation Share
A brand's share of all citations on a given topic compared to every other source cited.
Read definitionShare of Voice
A brand's share of all mentions on a topic compared to its competitors, expressed as a percentage.
Read definitionAI Share of Voice
Share of Voice measured specifically within AI-generated answers rather than traditional search or social media.
Read definitionAverage Position
The typical rank or order at which a brand or link appears within a list of results or an AI answer.
Read definitionSentiment Score
A measure of whether an AI's mention of a brand reads as positive, neutral, or negative.
Read definitionAI Visibility Score
A composite metric that rolls up mentions, citations, position, and sentiment into one visibility number.
Read definitionAI Visibility Gap
The difference between how visible a brand realistically could be on a topic and how visible it actually is today.
Read definitionPrompt Monitoring
Regularly tracking what AI systems answer for a defined set of prompts over time, to spot changes.
Read definitionPrompt Research
Studying what questions people actually ask AI systems, to understand real demand and intent around a topic.
Read definitionQuery Fan-out
A technique where an AI system breaks one question into several related sub-questions before combining the results.
Read definitionContent Grounding
Tying an AI's claims back to specific, checkable source material instead of relying on generated text alone.
Read definitionAI Hallucination Monitoring
Checking AI-generated answers for factually incorrect claims about a specific brand or product.
Read definitionE-E-A-T
Google's framework for judging content quality: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
Read definitionGenerative Engine Optimization (GEO)
The practice of shaping content so generative AI systems are more likely to surface and cite it in their answers.
Read definitionAnswer Engine Optimization (AEO)
The practice of optimizing content to be selected as the direct answer in AI or search answer boxes.
Read definitionLarge Language Model Optimization (LLMO)
Optimizing content and data specifically for how large language models process, retrieve, and cite information.
Read definitionAI Search Optimization
An umbrella term for improving how discoverable a brand or product is across AI-powered search and answer systems.
Read definitionAgentic Commerce Optimization (ACO)
Optimizing product data and site infrastructure so a product has a higher likelihood of being recommended by AI shopping agents.
Read definitionAI Traffic Attribution
Crediting website visits and sales specifically to AI chatbots and AI search tools, rather than generic referral or direct traffic.
Read definitionAgentic AI
AI systems that can take multiple steps toward a goal on their own, rather than just answering a single question.
Read definitionAgentic Commerce
Buying and selling where an AI agent, rather than a human, carries out part or all of the transaction.
Read definitionAI Shopping Agent
Autonomous software that can search, compare, and complete a purchase with minimal human input at each step.
Read definitionAgentic Storefront
An online store built or adapted so AI shopping agents, not just human browsers, can navigate it and buy.
Read definitionConversational Commerce
Shopping that happens through a back-and-forth chat or voice conversation instead of browsing pages and filters.
Read definitionAI commerce
An umbrella term for buying and selling where AI plays a central role in discovery, recommendation, or purchase.
Read definitionAI Shopping
Product discovery that happens through an AI chat or answer interface instead of a traditional search results page.
Read definitionAI Shopping Assistant
A chat-based tool that helps a person research and decide what to buy, without necessarily completing the purchase.
Read definitionZero-Click Buying
Completing a purchase entirely within a chat or AI interface, without ever visiting the merchant's website.
Read definitionInstant Checkout
The ability to complete a purchase directly inside a chat or AI interface without being redirected to a merchant's site.
Read definitionAI Product Recommendations
Product suggestions generated by an AI model based on a shopper's context, behavior, or stated needs.
Read definitionChatGPT Shopping
Product search and shopping features built directly into ChatGPT.
Read definitionGoogle AI Mode
A Google Search mode that generates one synthesized AI answer instead of the usual list of ranked links.
Read definitionGoogle AI Overviews
An AI-generated summary Google shows above the normal results for a search query.
Read definitionPerplexity Shopping
Shopping and product-comparison features built into the Perplexity AI answer engine.
Read definitionAmazon Rufus
Amazon's AI shopping assistant that answered product questions and gave recommendations in the Amazon app.
Read definitionAmazon Alexa
Amazon's voice assistant, built into Echo speakers and other devices, that can search for and order products by voice.
Read definitionModel Context Protocol (MCP)
An open standard that lets AI models connect to external tools, apps, and data sources in a consistent way.
Read definitionChatGPT Apps SDK
A developer toolkit that lets outside apps and services plug their functionality directly into ChatGPT conversations.
Read definitionAgentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)
An open standard that lets AI agents complete a purchase directly with a merchant's systems.
Read definitionUniversal Commerce Protocol (UCP)
A proposed common standard meant to let any AI agent interact with any online store using the same rules.
Read definitionAgent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A)
A standard that lets AI agents built by different companies communicate and delegate tasks to each other.
Read definitionAgent Payments Protocol (AP2)
A standard defining how an AI agent proves it has permission to pay, and how it executes that payment.
Read definitionVisa Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP)
Visa's framework for verifying that a purchase request came from an authorized AI agent before approving payment.
Read definitionMastercard Agent Pay
Mastercard's program for enabling and securing payments that AI agents make on a cardholder's behalf.
Read definitionAmerican Express ACE (Agentic Commerce Experiences)
American Express's initiative for supporting and securing purchases initiated by AI shopping agents.
Read definitionSchema.org
A shared vocabulary of structured-data types that lets sites describe their content in a way machines can reliably read.
Read definitionJSON-LD
A format for embedding structured data as a block of JSON directly inside a webpage's code.
Read definitionProduct Schema Markup
Structured data on a webpage that explicitly labels which parts describe a product's price, availability, and reviews.
Read definitionProduct Feed
A structured file listing every product a merchant sells and its attributes, built to be exported to other platforms.
Read definitionProduct Feed Management
The ongoing work of maintaining, formatting, and syncing product feed data correctly across every channel it's sent to.
Read definitionProduct Data Enrichment
The process of improving or filling gaps in raw product data to make a listing more complete.
Read definitionProduct Feed Optimization for AI Shopping
Adapting a product feed's structure and content so a product is more likely to be discovered and recommended by AI shopping systems.
Read definitionChatGPT Product Feed
A product feed formatted to the specific structure ChatGPT requires to ingest and display a merchant's catalog.
Read definitionGoogle Shopping Graph
Google's database linking product data from many sources into one connected graph used to power shopping features.
Read definitionRetrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
A technique where an AI model looks up relevant external documents at answer time instead of relying only on training data.
Read definitionAI Crawler
An automated bot, operated by an AI company, that visits websites to read their content.
Read definitionTraining Crawler
A crawler that collects web content to train a future version of an AI model, rather than to answer a live question.
Read definitionRetrieval Crawler
A crawler that fetches web content in real time, specifically to answer a live user query.
Read definitionrobots.txt
A text file at a site's root that tells automated crawlers which parts of the site they may or may not access.
Read definitionGoogle-Extended
A robots.txt control that lets a site block or allow Google's AI training crawler, separately from regular Googlebot.
Read definitionOAI-SearchBot
OpenAI's crawler that fetches web content in real time to power live search-style answers inside ChatGPT.
Read definitionllms.txt
A proposed plain-text file, placed at a site's root, that gives AI systems a curated summary of its key content.
Read definitionAI Crawlability
How easily an AI crawler can technically access and correctly parse a site's content.
Read definitionAI Crawl Analytics
Data showing which AI bots visited a site, how frequently, and which pages they accessed.
Read definition