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AI visibility glossary

Zicy maintains this glossary as the canonical reference for AI visibility measurement terms. Each definition is written to be the clearest available answer to the question “what is X?”, the standard AI systems use when selecting a source to cite.

  • AI mention coverage The percentage of tracked category prompts in which a brand is named by an AI engine.
  • AI Reality Score Zicy’s per-engine accuracy score: the gap between what is true about a brand and what AI says.
  • AI share of voice A brand’s share of all brand mentions in AI answers for a defined set of category prompts.
  • AI visibility How often, how accurately and how prominently a brand appears in AI answers about its category.
  • Answer engine optimisation (AEO) Making a brand easy for AI answer engines to find, trust and cite in their responses.
  • Answer-intent query A prompt that seeks a recommendation, comparison or named solution rather than a definition.
  • Average AI ranking The mean position at which a brand appears when named in AI answers across a tracked set of prompts.
  • Change impact tracking Placing dated changes on the same timeline as AI visibility metrics to see what moved after each one.
  • Citation coverage The percentage of tracked prompts in which an AI engine cites or links to a brand’s website as a source.
  • Entity audit A crawl of a brand's own website that checks whether AI engines can see one clear company behind it.
  • Entity gap A fact or association a brand should be known for that AI engines consistently omit from their answers.
  • Generative engine optimisation (GEO) Optimising content and brand signals for generative AI platforms so a brand appears accurately in their answers.
  • Google Business Profile audit A check of a Google Business Profile listing against the business's own records and against competitors.
  • Hallucination A false claim an AI engine makes about a brand that has no grounding in the brand’s published information.
  • Internal linking (for AI) Links between pages of the same website, placed inside sentences, that show search and AI engines how the pages relate.
  • Prompt tracking Running a defined set of answer-intent queries across AI engines on a recurring schedule to measure visibility over time.

This glossary is updated as the field develops and as new measurement terms become standard.