# The vocabulary

> Eleven words EOMA uses constantly — AEO, engine, prompt, run, citation, source, share of voice, gap, action, brand index — each defined in one line.

Source: https://eoma.ai/docs/start-here/the-vocabulary
Product: EOMA — AI search visibility for brands (https://eoma.ai)
Last updated: 2026-08-14

---
## In 10 seconds

- Eleven words carry most of EOMA. Learn these and every screen becomes readable.
- The two worth learning first are **prompt** (a question EOMA asks on your behalf) and **run** (one round of those questions going out).
- Each definition below links to the page that goes deeper.

## The short version

EOMA measures something the industry has not agreed on a name for yet, so its
vocabulary is a mixture of borrowed search terms and new ones. Most of the
confusion is in three places: *prompt* means a question and not an instruction to
a chatbot, *source* and *citation* are related but not the same, and *engine*
means an AI assistant rather than a search engine.

The rest is ordinary. Read this once and keep it as a reference.

## How it works

**AEO — Answer Engine Optimisation.** Making your brand more likely to appear in
the answer an AI assistant generates. The equivalent of SEO for a world where the
buyer gets one answer instead of ten links. → [What EOMA is](/docs/start-here/what-is-eoma)

**GEO — Generative Engine Optimisation.** The same idea under a different name.
Different vendors picked different letters; EOMA treats them as synonyms and uses
AEO.

**Engine.** One AI assistant. EOMA asks four: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and
Perplexity. They are asked the same questions and they frequently disagree, which
is itself a finding. → [AI provider visibility](/docs/pages/ai-provider-visibility)

**Prompt.** One whole question EOMA puts to the engines on your behalf — "which
sites are best for renting a villa in Antalya?" — not a keyword and not an
instruction. Your set is written from your brand profile, and you can edit it,
switch questions off, and add your own in any language.
→ [Why your prompts matter](/docs/concepts/why-prompts-matter)

**Run.** One round of your questions going out to the engines and the answers
being recorded. Paid plans run once a week. Each run takes a quarter of your
question set, so four runs cover all of it. → [What a run is](/docs/concepts/what-a-run-is)

**Citation.** A source the engine quoted or linked in an answer. The distinction
that matters: a citation of your own site inside an answer to a question that
*named* your brand is your own echo, not evidence anyone found you. EOMA ranks on
citations you **earned** — from questions that never mentioned you.
→ [How your visibility is scored](/docs/concepts/how-visibility-is-scored)

**Source.** The website a citation points at — your domain, a competitor's, a
directory, a newspaper. The sources board ranks the domains the engines trust
enough to quote in your category, with your own row marked in place.
→ [Your brand on Google](/docs/pages/your-brand-on-google)

**Share of voice.** Your slice of every brand mention across your answers. Two
views: the brands the engines named on their own, and the competitor list you
keep. They will disagree, and both are right.
→ [Competitors and share of voice](/docs/concepts/competitors-and-share-of-voice)

**Gap.** A question you keep losing — the engines answer it, and you are not in
the answer. Gaps are where the recommended work comes from, because a gap is a
specific, addressable thing rather than a general low score. You meet them as
the to-dos on your Actions board rather than as a list of their own.
→ [Actions](/docs/pages/actions)

**Action.** One specific job on your board: write this page, add this source,
correct this profile. Each one is either something EOMA can do for you or
something only you can do, and the board says which.
→ [The life of an action](/docs/concepts/life-of-an-action)

**Brand index.** The canonical record of what is true about your business — name,
contact details, languages, reach — as the engines should have it. You confirm and
correct it, and it is what EOMA uses when a correction needs to be published
somewhere. → [Brand index](/docs/pages/brand-index)

## What this means for you

**When a screen says "visibility", ask which one.** EOMA has two related figures
that are easy to conflate: the rate at which you appear in answers, and the
eight-axis score that weights being *suggested* far above being *known*. They
describe the same reality with different denominators and they will not match.

**"Mentions" and "answers" are different denominators.** A single answer that
names a competitor twice contributes two mentions. Percentages computed on
mentions and percentages computed on answers can differ several-fold while both
being correct.

**"Tracked" and "held" are different for keywords too.** Your pool is what you
hold; your tracked set is the much smaller group actually checked each week.
→ [Plans and limits](/docs/start-here/plans-and-limits)

**"Active" means eligible, not scheduled.** An active prompt is a candidate for
the next run, not a promise it will be asked this month.

## Common misunderstandings

| People assume | Actually |
|---|---|
| "A prompt is what I type into ChatGPT." | Here it is a question EOMA asks *on your behalf*, as a buyer would phrase it, and records the answer to. You do not chat with it. |
| "Engine means Google." | It means an AI assistant. Google appears in EOMA under its own heading, because Google's AI answer is a separate thing from ChatGPT's. |
| "Citations and sources are the same word." | A citation is one act of quoting; a source is the domain quoted. Ten citations of one newspaper is one source. |
| "AEO and GEO are two products." | Two names for the same discipline. EOMA uses AEO throughout. |
| "A gap is a bug report." | A gap is a market opportunity: a question being answered without you in the answer. |

## Related

- [What EOMA is](/docs/start-here/what-is-eoma) — the product in one page
- [How your visibility is scored](/docs/concepts/how-visibility-is-scored) — the number these words add up to
- [Dashboard](/docs/pages/dashboard) — where most of these appear together