Senso GEO Glossary: Guide to Key Terms

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Description:
This glossary is your clear, practical guide to the essential terms in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). It’s designed for marketing leaders, SEO teams, and AI visibility managers who want to understand exactly how Senso measures brand presence across generative engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity — and what actions to take when you spot gaps.

Excerpt (Blog Summary):
As AI replaces search results with direct answers, brands need a new way to measure presence, accuracy, and influence. This glossary explains Senso’s core GEO metrics — mentions, citations, share of voice, coverage, and accuracy — and shows how each connects to stages of the customer journey. Whether you’re starting out or optimizing at scale, this guide helps you speak the language of LLM visibility.

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Core Concepts (Start Here)

Mentions
The raw count of how many times your brand or product is named in an AI-generated response.
What it measures: Basic presence — are you part of the conversation?
Key insight: Mentions can be positive, negative, or neutral and don’t always include a link to your site.

Citations
Direct, often hyperlinked, references to your site or other owned assets.
What it measures: Authority and traffic potential — it shows the AI trusts your content enough to cite it.
Key insight: Platforms like Google AI Overviews and Perplexity weigh citations heavily. Maximizing citations is critical for discoverability.

Share of Voice (SoV)
The percentage of an AI answer dedicated to your brand compared to competitors.
Formula: (Words about your brand ÷ Total words in the answer) × 100
Key insight: High SoV shows you dominate the conversation when users are in discovery or decision-making stages.

Ground Truth
Your official, verified source of knowledge (docs, FAQs, specs, messaging). Senso uses this to validate answers and flag misalignment.

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Where You Show Up in the Customer Journey

Understanding when and why your brand appears in answers is as important as how often.

1. Topic (Education)
Broad category topics like “What are smart glasses?”
Why it matters: Establishes your brand as a trusted educator early in the journey.

2. Ranking (Brand Discovery)
List prompts like “Best banks in Texas?”
Why it matters: You need to make the list to get considered.

3. Comparison (Brand Selection)
Side-by-side prompts like “Delta vs. United Wi-Fi?”
Why it matters: Winning here positions you as the preferred choice before purchase.

4. Brand-Specific (Onboarding & Transaction)
Direct action prompts like “How do I apply for a loan?”
Why it matters: Accuracy here ensures a smooth path to conversion and prevents last-minute friction.

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Key Terms You’ll See in the Dashboard

Org / Brand
The business being tracked — your top-level entity in the platform.

Target Brand
Your own brand — the primary focus of visibility, coverage, and accuracy tracking.

Competitor Brand
Any brand you benchmark against to see relative performance.

Prompt
The prompt or query sent to an AI system.

Sentiment
The emotional tone of the mention — positive, negative, or neutral.

Eval (Evaluation)
The automated process Senso runs to score an AI answer for mentions, citations, share of voice, coverage, and accuracy.

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What Senso Measures (Your Metrics)

Mention Metrics

• Total Mentions: Every instance your brand is named.
• Mentioned prompts: Number of unique prompts where your brand was mentioned.
• Mention Rate (%): The percentage of all prompts that mentioned your brand.

Citation Metrics

• Total Citations: Every link to your site found in AI answers.
• Cited prompts: How many prompts included at least one link.
• Citation Rate (%): The percentage of prompts that included at least one link.

Share of Voice Metrics

• Average SoV: The average percentage of each answer dedicated to your brand.

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Pro Tip

Look at these metrics together, not in isolation.
For example, high mentions but low coverage means you’re being talked about but not shaping the narrative. High coverage but low citations means AI knows your content but isn’t pointing users back to it.

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No matter where you are in your GEO journey, this glossary is your decoder key for turning AI answers into actionable strategy.

👉 See your brand’s AI visibility in action: https://geo.senso.ai