Reference
Glossary & cheat sheet
Terms
- SEO — Search Engine Optimization. Getting ranked in traditional search-result links.
- GEO — Generative Engine Optimization. Getting cited inside AI-generated answers.
- AEO — Answer Engine Optimization. Often used interchangeably with GEO.
- RAG — Retrieval-Augmented Generation. The technique most AI answer engines use: retrieve candidate content live, then generate an answer grounded in it. See the Deep Dive on the Cite page.
- Crawler vs. retrieval agent — a crawler (GPTBot, ClaudeBot) collects data to train a model over time; a retrieval agent (ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot) fetches a page live to answer one specific question right now.
- E-E-A-T — Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust. Google's content-quality framework, now also relevant to how AI systems weight sources.
- Dofollow backlink — a link that passes ranking authority, as opposed to "nofollow," which doesn't.
- llms.txt — an emerging companion standard to robots.txt that points AI agents toward a site's best content.
- Core Web Vitals — Google's real-user performance metrics (LCP, INP, CLS), a minor but real ranking input.
Copy-paste: robots.txt for AI crawlers
# Allow everything by default
User-agent: *
Allow: /
# Retrieval agents — allow, so you can be cited in live answers
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /
User-agent: Claude-User
Allow: /
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /
# Training crawlers — allow or block per your own call
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /
User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
Sources this academy is grounded in
GEO statistics and content-pattern guidance: TechTimes, Enrich Labs, AI Magicx, Heeya, Neogen Media, Nexuro, CSSAWWWARDS, Kick Ads (all 2026). robots.txt / AI crawler configuration: DataImpulse, Capston AI, Anagram, CrawlCrawl, Soar Agency, OpenHermit (all 2026). AI tool directory strategy: AISO, Smol Launch, TheSaaSDir, StackBuilt, PoweredByAI, SaaS Lee (all 2026). This is a fast-moving space — re-verify specifics (bot names, directory line-ups) every few months rather than treating this as permanently fixed.