About
How this glossary is made.
A reference work is only as good as its accuracy. The pages below document, in writing, how every GEO Glossary entry is created, verified, measured, and maintained, so readers can calibrate their trust.
About articles
- Editorial methodologyHow every GEO Glossary entry is drafted, fact-audited, peer-reviewed, and schema-validated before publish. The 4-step workflow + the fact-check cadence.
- Citation trackingHow the citation status badges on each term page move from untested to cited or not-cited. The multi-source signals, the discipline, and the measurement gaps we openly acknowledge.
- Cluster disciplineHow GEO Glossary keeps related entries consistent. The 5 consistency rules that apply to clusters of 5-10 related concepts, and why cross-page consistency is a load-bearing trust signal.
- Why this existsWhy GEO Glossary is positioned as an editorial-first, vendor-neutral, indie-maintained terminology reference for AI search in 2026 (we are not aware of another reference combining all three properties with public editorial methodology, but cannot claim to be the only one). The brand positioning, the founder lineage, and what we are explicitly not.
Known limits and what they mean for you
- Where a specific number, date, or vendor claim could not be sourced to a public document, we softened it: a specific percentage becomes a hedge like "modest", a confident vendor capability becomes "in some configurations", a confident causal claim becomes "may be associated with". If we missed one, that is a bug.
- "Status in 2026" sections reflect best-effort synthesis of the current ecosystem. The AI-search landscape changes quickly and some claims may be six weeks stale before a sweep refreshes them. Always cross-check time-sensitive specifics against the cited sources.
- We do not accept paid placement, sponsored definitions, or "vendor preferred" framing. Tool names appear when relevant to illustrate categories, not because of any commercial relationship.
How we level terms
Every term carries a difficulty level you can filter by on the terms index. The level measures one thing only — how much prior vocabulary you need to read the entry, not how important the term is or who it is for:
- Foundational— no prior AI-search vocabulary needed. Entry points and broadly-known concepts.
- Intermediate— assumes you know what GEO and AI citation are. The bulk of the working vocabulary.
- Advanced— assumes a working vocabulary of retrieval mechanics, or engages primary research or technical specifications.
We publish this so the labels mean something you can check: an "advanced" tag is a promise that the entry leans on retrieval internals, a benchmark paper, or a protocol spec, not a marketing flourish. New entries are assigned against these three questions, and an audit script flags any term whose level drifts out of step with its neighbours.
Reporting errors
Found an error? Email hello@aisearchglossary.com: corrections and errata are welcome and read directly. After public launch this page will also list a GitHub Issues link for reader-reported errata. Every accepted correction results in an updated lastFactChecked stamp on the affected term and a dated changelog entry.
For an overview of the broader site, see the homepage for project positioning and the terms index for the current corpus.