AI & AEO

Zero-Click Search

Quick Definition

A zero-click search is when a user gets their answer directly from the SERP — featured snippets, AI Overviews, Knowledge Panel, calculators — without clicking a result.

In context

Zero-click rates have grown substantially with AI Overviews. Some queries now resolve 60%+ of searches without a click. Optimize for being the cited source even when clicks don't happen — brand visibility matters.

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Related terms

Bing Deep Search

Bing Deep Search is Microsoft's enhanced AI-powered search mode that uses GPT-4-class models to expand queries, fetch more sources, and synthesize longer answers than standard Bing.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

AEO is the practice of optimizing content to be cited in AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and other generative search engines.

AI Overviews

AI Overviews (formerly Search Generative Experience or SGE) are AI-generated answers that appear at the top of Google search results for many queries.

Query Fan-Out

Query fan-out is the technique AI search engines use to silently expand a single user query into multiple sub-queries, retrieve documents for each, and synthesize a unified answer from across them.

Retrieval-Augmented Search

Retrieval-augmented search uses a search component to retrieve current relevant documents, which an LLM then uses to compose an answer with citations.

Gemini (Google)

Gemini is Google's family of multimodal AI models, used to power Google's AI Overviews, Bard's successor chat surface, and the Gemini app and API.

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