AEO terms, defined for attorneys

Answer engine

An AI system that responds to a question with a generated answer rather than a list of links. ChatGPT, Gemini, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot are the ones most often used to find a lawyer.

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)

The practice of making a firm the one an answer engine names and cites when a person asks it for a lawyer. Done through quotable content, verifiable identity data, and trusted third-party mentions.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

A near-synonym for AEO, emphasizing that the engines generate text rather than retrieve it. The terms are used interchangeably in practice.

AI Overview

The generated summary Google places above traditional search results for many queries. For legal questions it frequently names firms and cites sources, displacing the links beneath it.

AI Mode

Google's conversational search interface, which answers in full rather than summarizing above links. It behaves more like ChatGPT than like classic search.

Citation

A source an answer engine attributes part of its answer to, usually shown as a link. Being cited means the engine quoted or relied on a firm's page. Being named without a citation means it drew on other sources about the firm.

Named

The outcome AEO is measured against: the firm appears by name in the engine's answer to a client question. We record whether a firm is named, whether the practice area and location are correct, and whether its site is cited.

Entity

A distinct thing an engine can identify and connect facts to: a firm, an attorney, an office. Engines name entities they can verify. An attorney whose name, bar number, practice area, and city agree across sources is a well-formed entity.

Structured data

Machine-readable markup, usually JSON-LD using schema.org vocabulary, that states facts about a page or organization explicitly. For a law firm the relevant types include LegalService, Attorney, FAQPage, and BreadcrumbList.

Schema.org

The shared vocabulary used in structured data. When a page says it is a FAQPage with specific Questions and Answers in schema.org terms, an engine can extract those pairs without interpreting the layout.

FAQPage markup

Structured data declaring a set of questions and their answers on a page. It is the markup answer engines quote most directly, which makes it the highest-value schema type for most practice pages.

Answer-first content

Writing where the direct answer to the question appears in the first sentence or paragraph, followed by the detail. It is the structure engines extract from most reliably and the one most bar rules are comfortable with, since it leaves little room for implication.

Query space

The full set of ways real clients phrase their questions to an answer engine for a given practice area and market. AEO content is built against the query space rather than against keywords.

Third-party mention

A reference to a firm on a site it does not control: a bar directory, a review platform, a news story, a professional profile. Engines weight these more heavily than a firm's own statements because they are harder to manufacture.

Consistency (NAP)

Agreement of a firm's name, address, and phone number across its own site and every third-party listing. Conflicting listings read to an engine as uncertainty about who the firm is, and uncertain entities are not named.

Hallucination

An answer engine stating something false with confidence, such as naming a firm for a practice area it does not handle or inventing a credential. Clear, consistent source data reduces the chance an engine hallucinates about a firm.

Zero-click

A search or question resolved without the person visiting any site. Most answer-engine interactions are zero-click. A firm can be recommended and contacted without its site ever being opened, which is why being named matters more than being visited.

llms.txt

A plain-text file at a site's root describing the site for AI systems: what it is, what it covers, and where the key pages are. An emerging convention rather than a standard, and inexpensive to provide.

Crawler (AI)

The automated agent an engine uses to read web pages. Each engine runs its own, identified by user agent, such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or PerplexityBot. A site's robots.txt controls which are permitted.

Territory

In our engagement terms, one practice area in one metropolitan area. We work with one firm per territory, because an answer engine names only a few firms and we will not work for two competitors on the same question.

Solomon Timothy, Founder, lawmarketing.io. Published October 4, 2026. Terms are added as the field settles; nothing here is a legal definition.