Plain-English Glossary
Every term you’ll meet in Zicy, explained simply. Where an example helps, we use Sarah at MenuPilot (AI menu software for restaurants) — the same example brand as the rest of these guides.
The big-picture terms
Section titled “The big-picture terms”AI visibility — how often, how accurately, and how prominently your brand shows up when people ask AI about your category. It’s the AI-era version of “ranking on Google” — except the win is being inside the answer, not in a list of links.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) — the work of making your brand findable and recommendable inside AI answers. The AI-era version of SEO.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) — another name for the same thing. Some people say AEO, some say GEO; they mean the same work.
Answer engine / AI platform / engine — the AI tools that answer questions directly: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overviews. Zicy tracks all five.
Zero-click search — when someone gets their answer directly on the search page (often from an AI summary) and never clicks through to any website. This is why website traffic is falling even for well-ranked sites — and why measuring what’s inside the answer now matters.
Tracked prompt — a question Zicy asks the AI platforms every week on your behalf, like “best AI menu software for restaurants.” Everything Zicy measures comes from the answers to these questions. (Full guide: How to write tracked prompts that actually work.)
Brand profile — your company’s identity inside Zicy: name, website, name variations, industry, competitors, market. Every measurement is scoped to one brand profile.
The four core numbers (your scoreboard)
Section titled “The four core numbers (your scoreboard)”Brand Mention Coverage — of all the AI answers to your tracked questions, the percentage that mentioned your brand at all. Sarah’s 41.7% = named in roughly 4 of every 10 answers.
Web Citation Rate — how often those answers actually linked to your website. Being named and being linked are separate wins; citation rates are normally much lower than mention rates.
AI Share of Voice — of all brand mentions across all answers (yours and competitors’), the share that were yours. Sarah’s 24.3% = about a quarter of the category conversation is about MenuPilot. You may also hear the industry term “share of answer” — same idea.
Average AI Ranking — when AI lists recommendations, your average position in the list. Lower is better: #1 means you’re usually recommended first.
Citation terms (who gets the credit)
Section titled “Citation terms (who gets the credit)”Citation — a link or source reference inside an AI answer. When AI answers “best menu software,” it often cites the websites it drew from.
Owned citation — the AI cited your own website. The strongest form of credit.
Earned citation — the AI cited a third-party site talking about you: press, review sites, directories. This is what PR work earns.
Competitor citation — the AI cited a rival’s website in an answer about your category.
Uncited — the AI used information but credited nobody. For publishers especially, this flags content being used without credit.
Narrative Control — Zicy’s plain-English headline for owned citations: how often AI backs up what it says about you with your own site.
Topic terms (where you win and lose)
Section titled “Topic terms (where you win and lose)”Key Topics — every subject AI brings up when discussing your category (for MenuPilot: menu pricing, menu design, food-cost analysis…). Zicy sorts them into three tiers:
Brand Leaders — topics where AI associates your brand more than any tracked competitor. Defend these.
Battlegrounds — topics where you appear, but a competitor is associated more strongly. Usually the best return on effort — you’re already in the game.
Blind Spots — topics AI discusses where your brand barely exists. The higher the topic’s demand, the bigger the missed opportunity.
Topic Leader — the brand AI credits most on a given topic. On your Blind Spots, this column shows who’s winning instead of you.
Treemap — the big colored-rectangles chart on the Key Topics page. Rectangle size = how much AI talks about that topic; color = how present your brand is in it.
Diagnosis terms (is AI right about you?)
Section titled “Diagnosis terms (is AI right about you?)”Brand Intelligence — Zicy’s “truth layer”: it compares what AI says about you against what’s actually true, and flags the gaps.
AI Reality Score — the fact-check score from that comparison. A low score means AI is spreading wrong or outdated claims about you.
Hallucination — when AI confidently states something false — a wrong founding year, a product you don’t sell, a feature you never had. Hallucinations are sticky: once a model learns one, it repeats it until the underlying sources are fixed.
Brand Sentiment — a 0–100 score for how positively AI talks about you, with the exact split of positive, neutral, and negative responses.
Descriptors — the actual words AI uses to characterize your brand (“reliable,” “expensive,” “easy to use”). Similar words are clustered together so you see concepts, not word soup.
Technical terms (the fix-it toolbox)
Section titled “Technical terms (the fix-it toolbox)”llms.txt — a small text file placed on your website (at yoursite.com/llms.txt) that gives AI systems a clean, structured summary of who you are and what you offer. Think of it as a menu you hand the AI so it doesn’t have to guess.
Schema (structured data) — invisible labels in your website’s code that tell machines exactly what each piece of content is (“this is a price,” “this is a review,” “this is our address”). Well-labeled pages are easier for AI to quote correctly.
Site Audit — Zicy’s technical health check of your website from an AI-readability standpoint: can AI bots access it, does it have llms.txt, schema, a sitemap, decent speed.
Crawl / bot access — whether automated systems (including AI) are allowed to read your website. If your site blocks bots, AI can’t learn about you from it.
GA4 (Google Analytics 4) — Google’s tool that counts your website’s visitors. Zicy connects to it to show which visits came from AI.
GSC (Google Search Console) — Google’s tool showing which searches led people to your site. Zicy uses it to track branded-search behaviour.
Brand search lift — the rise in people searching your brand name directly. When AI recommends you, people often don’t click a link — they go search your name later. That’s why brand search is becoming the accepted proof that AI visibility is working.
Account & quota terms
Section titled “Account & quota terms”Prompt Slots — how many tracked prompts your plan allows in total.
Analysis Quota — the number of AI-answer analyses your plan includes. One prompt tracked across 5 engines uses 5 analyses per run.
Content Credits — the currency for the Content Generator; writing an article consumes credits.
Pitching Mode — a profile setting (mainly for agencies) that runs a one-off audit of a prospect without starting ongoing weekly tracking.
White label — replacing Zicy’s branding with your own (logo, name, colors) on the dashboard and exported reports, so clients see your brand, not ours. Available on agency-oriented plans.
Can’t find a term? Every module also has its own reference article walking through its screen in detail — see the Module Reference section.