About these definitions. Terms below are Really Good GEO's working definitions unless a source is cited on the individual entry. Where a definition describes an externally verifiable product behavior, a nearby source link points at the primary documentation.
Answer block
A compact passage that directly resolves a specific question in language that can stand on its own.
An answer block is not special markup. It is editorial structure. A good block usually names the subject, gives the answer, and includes the qualification required for accuracy.
AI citation
A visible reference from an AI-generated answer to a source, page, or domain.
Citation display varies by product; absence of a visible citation does not by itself prove no retrieval occurred. In Really Good GEO testing, one citation is not reported as persistent visibility — repeated runs are required.
Sources: OpenAI — Web search tool · Anthropic — Web search tool
Citation readiness
The degree to which a page has the access, relevance, clarity, evidence, and structure needed to be a credible citation candidate.
Citation readiness, as Really Good GEO defines it, is diagnostic — a measure of whether a page has the ingredients that make it a credible citation candidate. It is not a guarantee that any specific system will cite the page.
Entity clarity
How clearly a page identifies a thing and its relationships: company, product, person, category, audience, location, or concept.
“We make work easier” has low entity clarity. “Ledgerly is close-management software for distributed accounting teams” is much clearer.
Generative engine optimization (GEO)
The practice of improving how accurately and often a brand's published information can be used in AI-generated answers.
Really Good GEO defines GEO's scope as: technical access, content design, evidence, entity definition, question coverage, and measurement.
Generative engine
A system that composes an answer or other output from a prompt, sometimes using retrieved sources.
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity are commonly discussed in GEO, though their products, retrieval behavior, and citation interfaces differ.
Question architecture
The deliberate mapping of a page to the main question and follow-up questions it should resolve.
It prevents one page from vaguely targeting an entire category and helps related pages cover distinct intents.
Retrieval
The process of finding information that may help a model answer a prompt.
Retrieval can involve web search, a proprietary index, connected documents, or another knowledge source. Whether retrieval fires on a given prompt is product-specific.
Sources: OpenAI — Web search tool · Anthropic — Web search tool
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