AI Citation
When an assistant names your website as the source of something it said, usually with a link. A citation is the AI-era equivalent of a first-page ranking — it is the thing worth competing for.
Related terms
Token
The unit an AI reads and writes in — roughly three quarters of a word. Models are priced and limited by tokens, which is why very long documents cost more and sometimes get truncated.
Tool Use
An AI reaching outside itself to do something it cannot do alone: run a search, do arithmetic reliably, read a live page. Nearly every useful assistant depends on it.
Answer Engine
An answer engine replies to a question with a written answer instead of a list of links. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews are all answer engines. The old question was “do we rank?”; the new one is “are we the answer?”
Product Schema
Markup for an item you sell: name, price, currency, availability, condition. Without it an assistant reading your shop has to guess the price from the page, and sometimes guesses wrong.
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
An open standard for connecting AI assistants to outside tools and data in a consistent way. It matters to businesses because it is how an assistant might one day query your booking system directly.
Well-Known URI
A standard location, always under /.well-known/, where machines look for information about a site — security contacts, API catalogues, agent details. Putting files there means they can be found without being linked.