The AI-search jargon, decoded for a veterinary practice.

Why the vocabulary changed

Google started answering some searches itself, at the top of the page, in a box that reads like a paragraph from an expert. Other tools — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's own AI Mode — answer the question and cite a few sources instead of showing ten links. Within about a year, the marketing industry produced a set of acronyms for "get your practice into those answers," and a monthly fee to go with each.

The vocabulary is new. Most of the work underneath it is not. That is the whole point of this page, and it is worth knowing before the next proposal arrives.

AI Overviews

Stands for: nothing — it is the name of the feature. Google's paragraph-style answer at the top of some search results, with a handful of cited sources.

What it means: for some searches, Google now shows an answer before it shows the results. When it does, fewer people click any result, and the ones who do tend to click the sources the answer cited.

What agencies charge for: "AI Overview optimization," usually as a line inside an SEO retainer.

What to actually do: write pages that answer a question in a clear, declarative sentence near the top, with the answer supported by something specific — a number, a mechanism, a stated fact. AI Overviews lift from pages that state things plainly and can be quoted. That is not a new service; it is what a well-written page already does. In August 2026, Google's AI Overview cited this site's emergency-vet page. No AI Overview service was bought. The page was built as an ad landing page, written to answer the question, and that was enough.

Zero-click search

Stands for: a search where the person gets what they needed on the results page and never clicks through to any website.

What it means: a growing share of searches end without a click, because the answer, the phone number, the hours, or the map were already on Google's page. For a practice, that is often fine: the owner who saw your hours and called did not need to visit your site.

What agencies charge for: "zero-click strategy," which in practice means making sure your Google Business Profile, hours, phone, and reviews are correct and complete.

What to actually do: keep the Business Profile accurate and owned by you, mark up your hours and location so Google can read them, and count calls, not clicks. A zero-click search that produced a phone call is a success that a click-based report will record as nothing.

GEO

Stands for: generative engine optimization — getting cited by AI tools that generate answers, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Mode.

What it means: those tools answer a question by reading pages and quoting the ones they trust. The pages they quote tend to be the ones that state a clear claim, support it, and are readable without a login or a form.

What agencies charge for: a "GEO package," commonly presented as a new discipline with its own retainer.

What to actually do: the same thing as the AI Overview item above, because it is the same mechanism with a different reader. Clear structure, declarative statements, specifics that can be quoted, no content hidden behind a form. If a page is good enough for a human to cite, it is good enough for a model to cite. There is no separate "generative" version of a well-built page.

AEO

Stands for: answer engine optimization — the same idea as GEO with a different name, sometimes aimed at voice assistants and question boxes.

What it means: structuring content so a direct question gets a direct answer: "What does an emergency exam cost?" followed by the number, not by three paragraphs about your philosophy of care.

What agencies charge for: "AEO" as a line item, frequently on the same invoice as GEO, for work that is indistinguishable from it.

What to actually do: put the answer to the question the page is about at the top of the page, in one sentence. Then explain. Pet owners searching from a parking lot want the number first. So do the answer engines.

LLMO

Stands for: large language model optimization — a third name for the same practice as GEO and AEO.

What it means: see GEO.

What agencies charge for: the presence of three acronyms for one activity is itself the information. When a proposal lists GEO, AEO, and LLMO as separate services, ask what work differs between them. The honest answer is none.

What to actually do: nothing beyond what is already listed above.

What the acronyms share

Every one of them rewards the same page. A page that is about one thing. That states its answer early and plainly. That supports the answer with something specific. That loads fast, works on a phone, and can be read without filling in a form. That is the description of a good landing page, a good organic result, and a citable source, all at once — because Google's ranking system, Google's ad-scoring system, and the AI tools are all trying to predict the same thing: whether the person asking will get what they came for.

So the test for any AI-search line item on a proposal is not "is this real." The phenomenon is real; the answer boxes exist and they do take clicks. The test is whether the line item describes work that a properly built page does not already do. Usually it does not. What it describes is a new name on a monthly fee for the on-page work that should have been done once, when the page was built.

Two things that are new, and worth knowing

The search results page is getting shorter. When an AI answer takes the top of the page, positions that used to earn clicks earn fewer. This is a real change and it argues for two things: being the cited source rather than the seventh link, and measuring calls rather than clicks, because clicks are becoming a worse proxy for what happened.

Search Console now reports it. Google's Search Console shows when your pages appear in AI features. It is free, it is in an account you should already own, and it answers "are we in the answers" without an agency's report. Check it before you pay anyone to improve a number you can read yourself.

What I sell, for the record

Google Ads for independent veterinary practices, with the landing pages built properly. The on-page work described on this page comes with every page I build, because it is the same work that makes an ad convert. I do not sell GEO, AEO, LLMO, or AI Overview optimization, and I would not know how to invoice for them separately, because I could not tell you what I would do differently.