Making your company readable by AI. Outside, and in. AI search · Glossary
The AI search glossary, in plain language
The vocabulary of this trade is young and nobody has settled it. Here are the terms that matter, defined in one sentence, and for each one what we actually do about it, measurements attached.
Every definition fits in one sentence. When a term covers something we practise, the practice is linked: you can verify instead of believing.
AI search, GEO, AEO, LLMO
One trade, several names: making a company citable by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini when its future customers ask them questions, then honestly measuring what those engines answer. AEO stands for answer engine optimisation, GEO for generative engine optimisation, LLMO for large language model optimisation. We say AI search, because a business owner is not looking for an acronym.
Citation share
The share of relevant AI answers that cite your site as a source, over a given question set. It is the metric that replaces classic SEO position tracking. Our Barometer measures it for our own name, zeros included.
Share of model
How often a brand appears in AI answers against its competitors when nobody names it in the question. The successor to advertising share of voice: how often the machine thinks of you on its own.
Prompt corpus, frozen questions
The question set visibility is measured on. The trade says “strategic prompt corpus”; we say frozen questions: set down in writing before the first reading, never changed afterwards, so measurements stay comparable over time. Ours are non-branded: they do not contain the client’s name.
External authority
What others say about you: press, directories, reviews, third-party sites. SEO was largely played on your own site; AI citation is played first at the third parties engines consider reliable. Our public diagnostic measured it: the citation gap is an authority problem, not an access problem.
Methodology disclosure
Publishing your measurement parameters: which questions, how many passes, which engines, on which dates, with which limits. It is what lets you compare providers instead of believing them. Our charter does it in nine rules.
Factual grounding
A figure is grounded when it carries its number, scope, date and source. Answer engines favour grounded content; ours is grounded as a writing rule.
Model panel
The list of engines a measurement is taken on, named precisely. Ours: ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, with the exact model recorded on every reading. A visibility figure without a named panel compares to nothing.
llms.txt
A file at the root of a website that summarises its pages for AI robots, like a sitemap in plain language. Useful but never sufficient: Google said in 2025 that it does not use it, and no file replaces citable content. Ours is live, and we deploy it for clients.
Digital fingerprint (SHA-256)
A file’s signature: the same file always yields the same fingerprint, and a single changed letter yields another. Publishing a copy’s fingerprint lets anyone verify it has not been retouched since. Our market register publishes one for each of its 114 captures, in a public manifest.
Decision-grade measurement
The quality tier set by the IAB in August 2026 for AI-visibility measurement: published parameters, named surfaces and models, a described question corpus, documented cadence and reproducibility. Below it, a measure stays “directional”: good for an intuition, not for a budget. Our reading of the standard, and what we still lack, are published.
The HENUSSE Measurement Bench
Our reading tool: built by the house around the vendors’ own agents, not a resold third-party dashboard. Frozen questions, three passes per question, recorded provenance, published zeros, and a verified concordance with the real ChatGPT application at the reading of the night of 14 to 15 August 2026, 30 presence verdicts out of 30, on the OpenAI surface. Proprietary does not mean opaque: the method is published, and readings can be replayed.
As-built file
The plans of what we install at a client: where the data lives, what each step does, which rules apply, how to stop or resume everything. Included in every integration engagement, handed over on delivery, as on a building site. We would rather be kept for the work than by the lock.
Glossary published on 15 August 2026, kept up to date by the firm. Missing a term? Write to us.