ThatDeveloperGuy Glossary.
Canonical definitions of web development, SEO, AEO, GEO, AIO, accessibility, Schema.org, performance, and federal contracting terms. Each entry includes 2026-current data, real-world insight from ThatDeveloperGuy client work, and citations to authoritative sources. Maintained by Joseph W. Anady.
AI Search
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring web content so it gets extracted and cited by answer engines: Featured Snippets, People Also Ask boxes...
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Generative Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring web content so it gets cited in responses from generative AI engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude,...
AI Overview Optimization (AIO)
AI Overview Optimization is the practice of structuring content to be cited and synthesized in Google's AI Overview cards — the LLM-generated answer block that ...
LLM Citation
LLM citation is the practice of being attributed as a source in responses from large language model (LLM) interfaces — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Copi...
llms.txt
llms.txt is a proposed standard markdown file placed at the root of a website that tells LLMs and AI agents which pages on the site are canonical for citation. ...
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
Retrieval-Augmented Generation is the architecture that powers AI search engines. RAG combines a retrieval step (fetching relevant documents from an index) with...
AI Overview
AI Overview is Google's LLM-generated answer card that appears at the top of approximately 48 to 60 percent of search results as of May 2026. Powered by Gemini ...
Featured Snippet
A Featured Snippet is the boxed answer that appears at the top of Google SERPs above the classic 10 blue links, presenting a direct extracted answer from a web ...
People Also Ask (PAA)
People Also Ask is the expandable box of related questions that appears in Google SERPs, typically below the first few organic results. Each question expands to...
Google Knowledge Graph
The Google Knowledge Graph is Google's entity database — a structured knowledge base mapping people, places, organizations, things, and concepts plus their rela...
Knowledge Panel
A Knowledge Panel is the structured information box that appears in Google SERPs for entities (people, organizations, places, things) that have a strong Knowled...
Information Gain
Information Gain is the 2026 Google ranking signal that measures whether a piece of content adds new value beyond what existing top-ranked pages already provide...
Topical Authority
Topical Authority is Google's 2026 thesis that sites demonstrating depth across a single topic earn the right to rank for related long-tail queries they haven't...
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is Google's framework for evaluating content quality, particularly for YMYL (Your Money or Y...
Entity Vector (Author Vector)
An Entity Vector (specifically Author Vector when applied to people) is the dense semantic embedding Google maintains for a real-world entity (person, organizat...
Maintained by Joseph W. Anady at ThatDeveloperGuy. Suggest a term: admin@thatdeveloperguy.com