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Prefer uses precise terms to describe AI search visibility, measurement, and content optimization. This glossary defines the vocabulary you will see across the dashboard, reports, and documentation. Action A prioritized task in the Action Center that tells you what to do to win a citation, such as publishing a comparison page or getting listed in a directory. Answer Engine An AI system that generates answers to user queries, including ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Perplexity. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) The practice of structuring content so AI engines can find, cite, and accurately represent your brand in their answers. Audit A one-time, free analysis of how often your brand is named and cited across AI engines for a set of prompts. It produces a visibility score, competitor comparison, and prioritized actions. Brand Profile The set of details that define your brand inside Prefer, including name, domain, positioning statement, products and services, audience personas, and brand identity adjectives. Citation A reference to your brand or domain that an AI engine includes in its answer, typically as a linked source. Citation Share The percentage of all citations in a given scope that point to your domain. It measures how often you are referenced as a source. Competitor A rival brand that Prefer tracks alongside your own. Competitors are discovered from engine answers and can be monitored for share of voice, citations, and ranking shifts. Content Gap A topic or prompt where competitors are cited and your brand is not. Content gaps appear in the Content Studio and Competitors console as opportunities to create or optimize content. Delta The change in a metric between the latest tracking run and the previous run. A positive delta means improvement; a negative delta means decline. Engine An AI answer engine that Prefer queries. The standard set, included on every plan, is ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode. Evidence Drawer A slide-out panel in the Competitors console that shows the actual answer text from an AI engine for a specific prompt, including which brands were named and which sources were cited. Persona A representation of your target audience segment, used to tag prompts and weight how your brand appears for different buyer types. Project A container inside your workspace for a single brand or client. Each project has its own prompts, competitors, tracking runs, and content. Prompt A query or question that Prefer runs across AI engines to measure visibility, such as “best CRM for small teams.” Rank Your position among brands named in an answer for a given run and engine. Rank 1 is the best. Region A geographic market where prompts are tracked. Every plan can track any of 197 countries; a prompt tracked in three countries uses three prompt slots. Run A single execution of your tracked prompts across all enabled engines. Each run produces results that are aggregated into metrics and trends. Sentiment The tone of what AI engines say about your brand in their answers: positive, neutral, or negative. It is derived from engine-generated text, not social media or reviews. Share of Voice Your brand mentions as a percentage of all brand mentions across the answers in a given scope. It measures awareness relative to competitors. Source A domain or URL that an AI engine cites in its answer. Prefer tracks which sources appear most often and whether your domain is among them. Tag A label you can apply to prompts for filtering and organization within the Prompts console. Topic A thematic bucket that groups related prompts. Topics help you organize and analyze visibility by subject area. Tracked Prompt A prompt that is actively monitored across AI engines in your plan. Each tracked prompt consumes one slot toward your plan limit. Tracking Run The automated or manual execution that queries all tracked prompts across all enabled engines and records the results. View A saved grouping of prompts in the Prompts console, similar to a folder or playlist, that lets you monitor a custom subset. Visibility Score The percentage of tracked answers in scope that name your brand. It is the headline metric for how discoverable you are in AI search. Workspace The top-level environment for your account. A workspace can contain multiple projects, team members, and integrations.

Metrics

Learn how Visibility Score, Share of Voice, and other metrics are calculated.

Prompts and Topics

Understand how prompts are organized, tracked, and grouped by topic.