GEO & AI search glossary
Grounding
What does grounding mean for an AI answer?
Tying a model's answer to real, retrievable sources rather than to its training memory. Grounded answers are the ones that carry citations — and therefore the ones GEO can influence.
An ungrounded answer comes from whatever the model absorbed during training, which is frozen and unattributed. A grounded answer is assembled from documents fetched at question time, and those documents get named.
Everything GEO does targets grounded answers, because that is the surface where fresh content published this month can change what the model says next month.
Related terms
- Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)The technique behind most AI search: before answering, the system retrieves relevant documents and writes its answer from them. GEO exists because the retrieval step decides which brands even get a chance to be mentioned.
- HallucinationWhen a model states something confidently that is not true. Publishing clear, sourced, unambiguous facts about your own business reduces the chance an engine invents details about you.
- LLM citationA mention of a source, brand or URL inside an AI-generated answer. Citations are the visibility currency of generative search: if the model does not cite you, the user never learns you exist.
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