Glossary: voice search and AI visibility

Every term around voice search and AI visibility, explained briefly and clearly — so you always know exactly what is being talked about.

Voice search: Voice search means someone asks a question out loud to an assistant such as Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant, instead of typing it. The assistant typically gives one spoken answer rather than a list of results. For a local business, that one answer is the difference between a new customer and no customer.
AI visibility: AI visibility is the extent to which AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity know a business, describe it correctly and recommend it. It is determined by the quality and consistency of the public data about that business. A business with strong AI visibility is mentioned more often as the answer to customers’ questions.
Answer engine: An answer engine is a system that gives one direct answer to a question, instead of a list of links. Voice assistants and AI chatbots are answer engines: they choose the source they trust most. Whoever is not chosen remains invisible to the person asking.
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO): AEO is the practice of optimising business information so that answer engines — voice assistants and AI chatbots — pick a business as the answer. It centres on correct, consistent data and machine-readable information in the sources those systems rely on. AEO complements classic SEO, which aims at rankings in ordinary search results.
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO): GEO is the practice of optimising content and business data so that generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity describe and recommend a business correctly in their answers. Where classic SEO aims at positions in search results, GEO aims at being mentioned inside the AI answer itself.
Large language model (LLM): A large language model, or LLM, is the AI system behind assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini, trained on vast amounts of text. It answers questions based on what it learnt from those texts and, increasingly, on live web sources. What an LLM knows about a business therefore depends on what can be found about it online.
AI assistant: An AI assistant is a chat program built on a large language model that answers questions in plain language; well-known examples are ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. More and more people ask such an assistant directly which business, service or product to choose. The assistant typically recommends only a handful of names — often just one.
Voice assistant: A voice assistant is an assistant you operate with your voice, such as Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant. It answers questions — such as where the nearest bakery is — usually with a single spoken answer. It builds that answer on data sources such as map services, business profiles and directories.
Google Business Profile: The Google Business Profile is Google’s free business listing that appears in Google Search and Google Maps, showing opening hours, address, photos and reviews, among other things. It is a primary source for Google Assistant and weighs heavily in local search results. A complete, up-to-date profile is the foundation of local findability.
Apple Business Connect: Apple Business Connect is Apple’s free platform through which a business manages its listing in Apple Maps: location, opening hours, photos and promotions. Siri bases local answers to a significant degree on this data. A business that is missing or has wrong details there is hard or impossible for Siri users to find.
Bing Places: Bing Places (Bing Places for Business) is Microsoft’s business directory behind the Bing search engine. Its data feeds Alexa and Microsoft Copilot, among others. A correct listing in Bing Places therefore matters more than Bing’s share of the search market would suggest.
NAP consistency (name, address, phone): NAP stands for name, address and phone number. NAP consistency means those details are exactly the same everywhere online: in every directory, on every map and on the business’s own website. Assistants and search engines cross-check sources against each other — discrepancies undermine trust in a business, and with it its chance of being chosen as the answer.
Citation: A citation is any place where a business’s name, address and phone number appear online, such as business directories and map services. Search engines and assistants use citations as evidence that a business really exists and that its details are correct. Consistent citations in relevant sources strengthen local findability.
Local pack (Google’s map results): The local pack is the block with a map and a few business listings that Google shows at the top of local search results. The selection is based on relevance, distance and prominence — signals that come largely from the Google Business Profile. A spot in the local pack makes a business far more visible than an ordinary result further down the page.
Knowledge panel: The knowledge panel is the information block Google shows when someone searches for a specific business, with details such as opening hours, photos, reviews and contact information. Its content comes mainly from the Google Business Profile and other public sources. A correct knowledge panel is often the first impression a customer gets of a business.
Structured data (Schema.org): Structured data is code on a website — usually following the Schema.org standard — that explicitly tells machines what is on the page: this is the business, these are the opening hours, this is the address. Search engines and AI systems read that code to understand and reuse information reliably. It increases the chance of rich search results and of correct AI answers.
Zero-click search: A zero-click search is a search where the user gets the answer immediately — in the search results, from a voice assistant or from an AI — and so never clicks through to any website. As a result, customers increasingly choose a business without ever visiting its website. That makes correct details in the sources themselves all the more important.
Review signals: Review signals are the characteristics of online reviews that search engines, assistants and AI take into account: the average rating, the number of reviews, how recent they are and whether the business responds to them. Strong review signals increase the chance that a business is recommended as the answer. They are signals a business can build directly, together with its customers.

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