Glossary
Plain-English definitions for every term used in Outercite and the wider AI search visibility space.
Every term you will encounter in Outercite, listed alphabetically. When you see a word linked to this page elsewhere in the docs, the definition you need is here.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)
The practice of shaping your content, brand presence, and online signals so that AI search engines cite your business in their answers. AEO is the AI-era equivalent of SEO: instead of ranking in a list of blue links, you are aiming to be the answer the AI gives.
AI Search
A search experience powered by a large language model (LLM) that generates a natural-language answer rather than a ranked list of links. Outercite tracks six AI search engines: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI, Grok, and DeepSeek.
Citation
A citation occurs when an AI search engine names or references your business in a response to a prompt. Outercite only counts citations that pass its verification pipeline: both the deep-analysis model and the cross-verification model must agree the mention is genuine.
Citation Rate
The percentage of prompts where your business was cited at least once. A citation rate of 48% means your business appeared in 48 out of every 100 AI responses checked. See Data Definitions for the precise calculation.
Competitor
Any other business you have added to Outercite for comparison. Outercite tracks how often competitors are cited on the same prompts as your business, which feeds into share of voice and threat score calculations.
Confidence Score
A 0-100 score reflecting how certain the verification pipeline is that a citation is genuine. It is not a measure of how well you are performing. A score of 95 means both verification models agreed strongly; a lower score flags a citation that only one model partially detected. See Confidence Scores Explained for a full walkthrough.
Intent Classification
The first step of the verification pipeline. Every prompt is classified by intent type; the categories used include (for example) local, buying intent, informational, comparison, and branded. This classification tells you what kind of question the AI was answering when it cited (or did not cite) your business. The exact taxonomy is illustrative and may evolve.
Keyword
See Prompt / Keyword.
Lost Citations
Prompts where your business was cited in a previous verification window but was not cited in the current one. A rising lost-citations count is an early signal that your AI visibility may be declining on those queries.
Parent Org
In the agency plan, the parent org is the top-level account that owns all client workspaces. The parent org can see aggregated portfolio data, apply white-label settings, and manage wholesale pricing. Individual client workspaces are nested beneath it.
Prompt / Keyword
A question or phrase sent to an AI search engine to check whether your business is cited. In Outercite's interface, prompts are sometimes called keywords for consistency with SEO familiarity, but unlike a traditional keyword they are full natural-language questions (for example, "best accountant in Brisbane").
Share of Voice
The proportion of citations in a given prompt set that belong to your business compared to all tracked businesses (you plus your competitors). If your business is cited 40 times and competitors together are cited 60 times across 100 checks, your share of voice is 40%. See Competitors and Share of Voice.
Surge Alert
A notification triggered when citation activity for a prompt, competitor, or engine changes significantly in a short window. A positive surge means you (or a competitor) suddenly appeared far more often. A negative surge flags a drop worth investigating.
Threat Score / Threat Level
A composite score showing how aggressively a specific competitor is appearing on your tracked prompts. A high threat score means the competitor is being cited frequently, on high-intent prompts, and potentially displacing your mentions. Threat level is a bucketed label (Low, Medium, High) derived from the threat score.
Verification Pipeline
The four-step process Outercite uses to confirm every citation:
- Intent classification: the prompt is categorised.
- Deep analysis: the deep-analysis model reads the full AI response and identifies every business mentioned.
- Cross-verification: a second, independent model audits those findings independently.
- Consensus result: only citations both models agree on are recorded.
This process keeps false positives near zero. See How the Pipeline Works.
Visibility Score
A 0-100 composite score summarising your overall AI search presence across all tracked engines and prompts. It combines citation rate, average position, share of voice, and engine coverage into a single number for quick benchmarking. The aggregate visibility score across all tracked organisations is currently 74/100.
White-Label
A feature available to agency accounts that lets you replace Outercite's branding with your own agency's name, logo, and colours on client-facing reports and dashboards. Clients see your brand, not Outercite's.
Wholesale Pricing
The discounted rate agencies pay when purchasing Outercite seats in bulk for their clients. Agencies resell (or bundle) Outercite at their own margin. Wholesale pricing is managed at the parent org level.
Workspace
A self-contained environment within Outercite that holds one organisation's prompts, competitors, citations, and settings. An organisation account is a single workspace. An agency account is a parent org that contains multiple client workspaces.