Shopify AEO / GEO dictionary

Each entry owns the definitional query (“What is {term}?”). Implementation how-tos stay on Learn; crawler User-Agent facts stay on Bots; category applications stay on Guides.

• AEO — Answer Engine Optimization — practices that help brands get named or cited in AI answers.
• AEO program — An operating system of owners, KPIs, and rituals for AI visibility — not a one-off audit.
• AI allowlist — An explicit set of AI user-agents permitted by robots.txt or security tools.
• AI crawler — A bot operated by an AI company to fetch public web pages.
• AI referral traffic — Visits attributed to AI products in analytics (when referrers are visible).
• AI visibility — How often and how prominently AI assistants mention or recommend your brand for category questions.
• AI visibility audit — A structured check of AI share of voice plus technical readiness (crawlers, schema, Shopping signals).
• AI visibility scorecard — A one-page weekly review of SoV, tech readiness, content coverage, and citations.
• AI visibility vs SEO — The distinction between ranking in Google and being named in AI answers.
• Answer engine — An AI system that returns direct answers rather than only a list of blue links.
• Answer Engine Optimization — Another name for AEO — optimizing to be named or cited in AI answers.
• Answer shortlist — The small set of brands an assistant names in a recommendation answer.
• Anthropic — Company behind Claude and ClaudeBot.
• Applebot-Extended — Apple control related to Apple Intelligence / generative features using web content.
• Availability — In-stock / out-of-stock state exposed to machines via schema or feeds.
• Best-of prompt — A shopper question asking for top or best products in a category.
• Blended SoV — Share of voice averaged or combined across multiple AI models.
• Brand alias — Alternate names used to detect mentions of the same brand entity.
• Brand-check prompt — A question that inserts a specific brand name (e.g. “Is X legit?”).
• BreadcrumbList — Schema.org BreadcrumbList for site hierarchy.
• Bytespider — ByteDance crawler associated with AI/data collection programs.
• Canonical URL — The preferred URL for a page when duplicates exist.
• CCBot — Common Crawl bot; datasets are widely reused by AI systems.
• Challenge wall — A bot-detection interstitial that blocks automated fetches of HTML.
• ChatGPT Shopping — Product results surfaced in ChatGPT for commercial queries.
• ChatGPT-User — User-agent seen when ChatGPT fetches pages on a user’s behalf during browsing.
• Citability — How easily a page can be quoted or used as a source in an AI answer.
• Citation asset — A page or document designed to be quoted by publishers and AI systems.
• Claude-User — Anthropic user-agent for on-demand fetches initiated from Claude.
• ClaudeBot — Anthropic crawler that fetches public pages for Claude-related features.
• Collection intro — The introductory copy at the top of a Shopify collection page.
• Comparison prompt — A shopper question that forces tradeoffs between options or attributes.
• Compliance-safe claims — Product statements that are accurate and allowed under category regulations.
• Consideration share — Informal term for how often you appear in AI shortlists shoppers see.
• Core Web Vitals — Google’s UX performance metrics for pages.
• Customer domain — The primary hostname shoppers and canonical tags use (not only myshopify.com).
• Diffbot — Commercial web-data crawler used by various AI and knowledge products.
• Direct answer — A clear, early answer to a shopper question on a page (not buried below the fold).
• Entity clarity — Consistent naming and identity signals so models know which brand you are.
• Extractability — How easily an AI system can pull a factual answer from page HTML.
• FAQPage schema — Schema.org FAQPage markup for question/answer content.
• Feed — A structured export of products (JSON, XML, or merchant center feeds).
• Fetchability — Whether an AI crawler can retrieve real page HTML without blocks.
• Fix list — Prioritized technical and content recommendations from an AI visibility audit.
• Fix Sprint — TopMention’s done-for-you engagement to implement AI visibility fixes in Shopify.
• Gemini — Google’s generative model family; related web controls include Google-Extended.
• Generative answer — A natural-language response synthesized by an AI system, sometimes with citations.
• Generative engine — An AI system that generates natural-language answers, often with citations.
• Generative Engine Optimization — Another name for GEO — improving visibility inside generative AI answers.
• GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — improving visibility inside generative AI answers and summaries.
• Google-Extended — Google control for Gemini / grounding-related uses of site content (separate from Googlebot SEO crawling).
• GPTBot — OpenAI crawler used to gather web content that may inform ChatGPT and related products.
• Grounding — When an AI system retrieves live web content to support an answer.
• GTIN — Global Trade Item Number (barcode identifiers such as UPC/EAN).
• Hero SKU — A priority product used for schema, GTIN, and content fixes first.
• JSON-LD — A JSON format for embedding Schema.org structured data in HTML.
• llms.txt — A root text file that summarizes a site for language-model crawlers.
• Merchant center hygiene — Keeping product feed attributes accurate across merchant platforms.
• Model mention — When an AI answer names your brand (or alias) in its response text.
• Money prompt — A high-intent shopper question that typically drives consideration or purchase.
• Multi-model panel — Running the same prompts across multiple AI providers.
• Myshopify domain — The *.myshopify.com hostname behind a Shopify store.
• noindex — A robots directive that asks search engines not to index a URL.
• OAI-SearchBot — OpenAI bot associated with search-style retrieval for ChatGPT.
• Offer schema — The offers object inside Product schema (price, currency, availability).
• Offer truthfulness — Whether price and availability in schema/feeds match the live PDP.
• OpenAI — Company behind ChatGPT, GPT models, and crawlers such as GPTBot.
• Operating rhythm — The recurring weekly/monthly process for measuring and shipping AEO work.
• Organization schema — Schema.org Organization markup for the brand/company entity.
• Owner URL — The single primary page meant to answer a given shopper prompt.
• PDP — Product detail page — the individual product URL on a store.
• Per-model gap — A material SoV difference between AI providers on the same panel.
• Per-model SoV — Share of voice calculated separately for each AI provider.
• Perplexity — Answer engine known for cited answers; operates PerplexityBot.
• PerplexityBot — Perplexity crawler used to retrieve sources for cited answers.
• Policy page citability — Using shipping/returns/about pages as trustworthy supporting sources.
• Problem-solution prompt — A shopper question framed as a pain or desired outcome.
• Product schema — Schema.org Product markup describing a sellable item (name, offers, brand, identifiers).
• Prompt coverage — Share of money prompts that have a dedicated on-site owner URL.
• Prompt panel — A fixed set of shopper questions used repeatedly to measure AI mentions.
• Query fan-out — When an AI system expands a user question into multiple retrieval queries.
• Retrieval — The process of fetching documents/snippets to support a generative answer.
• Rich results — Enhanced Google results powered by structured data.
• robots.txt — A file that tells crawlers which paths they may fetch.
• Schema.org — The vocabulary used for most ecommerce structured data on the open web.
• SERP — Search engine results page — classic blue-link discovery UI.
• Share of voice — The share of answers on a fixed prompt panel that mention your brand.
• Shopify products.json — A public JSON endpoint many Shopify stores expose listing products.
• Shopping prompt — A where-to-buy or purchase-readiness question.
• Sitemap — An XML file listing URLs you want discovered.
• SKU — Stock keeping unit — merchant-internal product identifier.
• Source appearance — When an answer engine shows your URL as a cited source.
• SoV baseline — The first fixed-panel measurement before major AEO work.
• Structured data — Machine-readable annotations (usually Schema.org) embedded in pages.
• Structured offers — Machine-readable price/availability data inside Product schema or feeds.
• Technical AI readiness — Whether crawlers, schema, llms.txt, and Shopping signals are in good shape.
• Theme app conflict — When Shopify apps inject duplicate or invalid structured data / scripts.
• Third-party citation — A mention or link on a site you do not own (review, roundup, forum).
• TopMention — AI visibility service for Shopify brands: scan, report, Fix Sprint, and monthly tracking.
• TopMentionBot — TopMention’s own crawler for AI-visibility technical audits when a merchant requests a scan.
• Training data opt-out — Controls (like Google-Extended) that affect whether content may be used for model training.
• Training opt-out — A robots control aimed at model-training uses rather than classic search crawling.
• User-Agent — The identifier a crawler sends in HTTP requests.
• Variant integrity — Consistent, truthful data across product variants (size, scent, firmness, etc.).
• Visibility score — TopMention’s composite score combining SoV and technical readiness components.