# Rank Monthly > Rank Monthly books businesses into the listicles, newsletters and creator posts that buyers read and AI quotes, and keeps them there every month. Publishers get paid every month for the spots they hold. ## Status - Businesses and publishers book a demo at https://rankmonthly.com/demo. Pricing is on request. - Screens, ledgers and figures on the site are labeled examples, not customer results. ## Who runs it - Rank Monthly BV, Kapelweg 12, 3951 AC Maarn, the Netherlands. - Founded by Joran Hofman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joranhofman/ - Contact: hello@rankmonthly.com - Terms of service: https://rankmonthly.com/terms ## How it works for businesses 1. Add your website: We read what you sell, build your knowledge base, scan your competitors and find the searches you want to rank for. You only set a budget. 2. Publishers connect their data: Search Console, Analytics, WordPress and more. Every number you see is measured, never typed in. 3. We match you on real data: With the publishers whose lists, newsletters and posts already reach your buyers. 4. It runs on autopilot: We write the content, add you to articles that already rank, publish new ones and track every placement. 5. Live where buyers look: In the lists your buyers find on Google and the answers AI gives them, kept there every month. 6. Every result in one ledger: Every placement, page visit, click and AI mention, month by month, with what you paid. ## How it works for publishers 1. Connect your site: Search Console, Analytics and WordPress. Your numbers come from your own data, never typed in. 2. See what your lists can earn: We read every list on your site, find the spots and suggest a monthly price from your real clicks. 3. Autopilot books and writes: Businesses that fit your topics book spots. Autopilot writes and publishes, or waits for your OK. 4. Get paid every month: Payment is held until each spot is verified live, then paid to you every month for the spots you hold. ## Autopilot - On: we book, write and keep each spot live for you. - Off: nothing goes out until you approve it. ## Questions ### What is Rank Monthly? Rank Monthly books businesses into the listicles, newsletters and creator posts that buyers read and AI quotes, and keeps them there every month. Publishers get paid every month for the spots they hold. ### What does autopilot mean? Autopilot is on by default. On: we book and accept deals for you within the rules you set. Off: you approve each deal yourself. ### How does payment work? Businesses pay a monthly price for each spot they hold, or once for a new post. The money is held until the placement is verified live. Publishers get paid every month for the spots they hold. ### Do paid spots need a label? Paid placements have to be disclosed under the rules that apply to the publisher. Google asks for paid links to be marked as sponsored, and many countries ask for a visible label. Rank Monthly can add both. Each publisher decides how paid spots are labeled on their site. ### Do you guarantee rankings? No. We book and keep spots in lists, newsletters and posts that already reach your buyers, and we report what every spot does each month. Where a page ranks in Google, and what AI assistants answer, is decided by Google and the assistants, so we never promise it. ### Who runs Rank Monthly? Rank Monthly BV, founded by Joran Hofman. We're based at Kapelweg 12, 3951 AC Maarn, the Netherlands. Email us at hello@rankmonthly.com. ### What happens after I sign up? Book a demo. We reply by email to pick a time and show you how it works for your side. ### Which placements can I buy? Positions in existing list articles, new sponsored articles and LinkedIn posts. Newsletter placements follow. ### How are publishers chosen? Publishers need their own domain and connected Google data, so every number you see is measured. Each one is matched to your topics, and you can filter by site strength and rating. ### Do placements carry a sponsored label? Paid placements have to be disclosed under the rules that apply to the publisher. Google asks for paid links to be marked as sponsored, and many countries ask for a visible label. Rank Monthly can add both. Each publisher decides how paid spots are labeled on their site. ### What does it cost? You hear the prices in your demo, before anything is booked. ### Who can join? Blogs on their own domain, newsletters and LinkedIn creators. Sites on a shared platform's subdomain, like yourname.medium.com, can't sell articles. ### Do I have to write the articles? No. Autopilot writes and updates them with each business's facts. With autopilot off, you write yourself and approve each deal. ### How do I get paid? Every month for the spots you hold, and once for a new post after it's verified live. ## Why it matters (published studies) - 51% of B2B software buyers now start their research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google. Source: G2, The Answer Economy, 2026. Survey of 1,076 B2B decision-makers. https://learn.g2.com/g2-2026-ai-search-insight-report - 40% of the sources AI assistants cited for buyer questions were independent lists. Vendors' own sites got 34%, review sites 3%. Source: Prefer, July 2026. 188 answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude. https://tryprefer.com/data/ai-search-statistics/ - 2.24% of AI citations on category questions went to the brand's own pages. The rest went to pages it doesn't own. Source: Foundation and AirOps, 2026. 5.1 million AI responses for 50 B2B brands. https://foundationinc.co/lab/branded-unbranded-ai-citations/ - 4.4x The average visitor from AI search is 4.4 times as valuable as the average traditional organic search visitor, based on conversion rate. Source: Semrush, July 2025. Visitors from non-Google AI search, such as ChatGPT. Sample size not published. https://www.semrush.com/blog/ai-search-seo-traffic-study/ ## Pages - [Home](https://rankmonthly.com/): what Rank Monthly is, for both sides - [For businesses](https://rankmonthly.com/businesses): Buyers shortlist tools in AI answers built from lists, newsletters and posts. Rank Monthly books you into them and keeps you there every month. - [For publishers](https://rankmonthly.com/publishers): Businesses pay a monthly price for spots in the lists your site already ranks with. Autopilot does the work. Every placement and every dollar in one ledger. - [Blog](https://rankmonthly.com/blog): articles and ranked lists - [About](https://rankmonthly.com/about): who runs Rank Monthly, why it works month by month, and how it makes money - [Contact](https://rankmonthly.com/contact): email for businesses, publishers, corrections, press and security - [Resources](https://rankmonthly.com/resources): all guides, research, comparisons and articles - [Privacy](https://rankmonthly.com/privacy): who handles signup data and how - [Terms of service](https://rankmonthly.com/terms): bookings, payment held until live, cancellation, refunds, liability ## Articles - [The best AI Overviews trackers for B2B in 2026](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/best-ai-overviews-trackers): SE Ranking, Semrush and Ahrefs track Google AI Overviews by keyword inside an SEO suite. Peec AI and Otterly.AI add prompts. Nine trackers checked on their own sites, plus free ways to check. - [The 10 best content marketing agencies for B2B SaaS in 2026](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/best-content-marketing-agencies-for-saas): Omniscient Digital and Grow and Convert lead on named AI search results and a public price. Ten B2B SaaS content agencies, checked on their own sites on 1 November 2026. - [The 10 best demand generation agencies for B2B SaaS in 2026](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/best-demand-generation-agencies): Powered by Search and TripleDart for paid plus AI search, Kalungi for a full outsourced team, Refine Labs and Directive for scale. Ten agencies checked on their own sites on 1 November 2026. - [The 10 best digital PR agencies for SaaS in 2026](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/best-digital-pr-agencies-for-saas): Crackle PR, Siege Media, uSERP and Definition lead ten digital PR and tech PR agencies for SaaS, checked on their own sites for AI answer work, results and price. - [The 10 best SaaS marketing agencies in 2026 (full-service and growth)](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/best-saas-marketing-agencies): Kalungi to hand over all of marketing, TripleDart for SEO, AI and paid in one team, Gripped for a public price. Ten SaaS agencies checked on their own sites. - [ChatGPT ads: how they work, what they cost and how they differ from being named in the answer](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/chatgpt-ads): ChatGPT ads are paid, labeled units below some answers for Free and Go users, billed per 1,000 views or per click. OpenAI says ads never change the answer itself. - [G2 reviews and AI visibility: does G2 get your SaaS into ChatGPT answers?](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/g2-reviews-ai-visibility): G2 reviews help, but they are no direct line into ChatGPT. g2.com is often cited, yet review sites got 3% of AI citations in one study, lists 40%. Keep reviews honest, and get into the lists. - [GEO metrics: what to measure in AI answers and how](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/geo-metrics): The core GEO metrics are mention rate, citation share, AI share of voice, position, sentiment and accuracy, cited sources, AI referral traffic, prompt coverage and engine spread. - [How to get cited by ChatGPT: what OpenAI says and what works for B2B SaaS](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/how-to-get-cited-by-chatgpt): Let OAI-SearchBot crawl your site, answer the question in your first 50 words, and get named on the third-party lists, reviews and posts ChatGPT already cites. Placement is not guaranteed. - [LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads vs paying a creator for a post: which fits B2B?](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/linkedin-thought-leader-ads-vs-creator-posts): Thought Leader Ads let you pay LinkedIn to show a member's public post to an audience you pick. A paid creator post buys the creator's words and followers. You can also use both. - [Listicle examples: 10 list articles that earn every month (and what they do well)](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/listicle-examples): 10 live list articles from Zapier, TechRadar, CNET, Buffer and others, with what each does well: answer first, a stated test method, best-for labels, update dates and disclosure. - [Listicle pitch email templates: how to ask a "best X" list editor for a spot](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/listicle-pitch-email-templates): Seven copyable pitch templates for asking a list editor to add, correct or test your product, or to quote a paid spot. Short, specific, disclosed, with one follow-up. - [Media kit and rate card template for blogs, newsletters and LinkedIn creators](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/media-kit-template): A media kit is one page with six parts: who you are, who reads you, dated numbers, what you offer, rates and how to book. Copy the free template here, no email needed. - [AI visibility audit: a checklist you can run in one afternoon](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/ai-visibility-audit): Test 20 buyer prompts three times in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and AI Overviews, log mentions and cited pages, then check crawlers, indexing, content and lists. - [The best AEO tools for B2B SaaS (2026): 10 tools that help you optimize, not only track](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/best-aeo-tools): Profound, AirOps and Writesonic do the most AEO work for you. AthenaHQ, Scrunch and Semrush add audits and prompt research. Otterly.AI starts at $29 a month. Ten tools checked live. - [How much to charge for a spot in your list article (a step-by-step method)](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/how-much-to-charge-for-a-listicle-spot): Price a list spot from its real clicks: monthly clicks to the page, the share that goes to that position and a value per click, adjusted for buyer intent, AI citations and exclusivity. - [How to sell newsletter sponsorships to B2B brands](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/how-to-sell-newsletter-sponsorships): Pick one or two ad formats, price them by CPM or a flat fee, put your numbers in a one-page media kit, pitch brands your readers already use, and label every ad clearly. - [The best AI visibility and GEO tools for B2B SaaS in 2026](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/best-ai-visibility-tools): The best AI visibility and GEO tools: Peec AI for a public price, Profound for enterprise, AthenaHQ for wide engine lists, Otterly.AI from $29. Plus AI rank trackers and LLM SEO tools. - [What GEO costs in 2026: agencies, tools and placements compared](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/geo-pricing): GEO costs from $0 to over $10,000 a month. Trackers start at $29 a month, list placements at about $135 once, and the GEO agency retainers we checked from $2,500 a month. - [The 10 best GEO, AEO and AI SEO agencies for B2B SaaS in 2026](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/best-geo-agencies-for-b2b-saas): Ten GEO, AEO and AI SEO agencies that get B2B SaaS brands named in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews, ranked by AI focus, named results, tracking and price. - [The 10 best SaaS SEO agencies for B2B and enterprise teams in 2026](https://rankmonthly.com/blog/best-seo-agencies-for-b2b-saas): Ten SaaS and B2B SEO agencies that work on Google and AI answers, from $2,500 a month to enterprise retainers, ranked by SaaS focus, AI search work, named results and price. ## Guides - [SEO vs GEO vs AEO: what each optimizes, how each is measured, and where third-party lists fit](https://rankmonthly.com/guides/seo-vs-geo-vs-aeo): SEO ranks your pages in search results. GEO gets your brand named in AI-written answers. AEO gets your content used as the direct answer. They overlap a lot, but GEO and AEO depend more on third-party pages. - [Listicle placements for B2B SaaS: what they are, what they cost and how to buy them](https://rankmonthly.com/guides/listicle-placements): A listicle placement is a paid spot for your product in a "best X" article. Services charge $135 to $500 per placement, mostly once; directories up to $1,200 a month. AI assistants cite these lists more than any other source. - [LLM SEO: how B2B SaaS brands get named in AI answers](https://rankmonthly.com/guides/llm-seo): LLM SEO is getting your brand named when buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude or AI Overviews which software to use. For B2B SaaS, most cited pages are lists, reviews and posts you don't own. - [How to monetize a blog with list articles: earn every month from the spots you rank](https://rankmonthly.com/guides/monetize-list-articles): Sell what your "best X" articles already have: buyers about to decide. Combine affiliate links with paid spots priced from your real clicks, label them clearly and get paid monthly for the spots you hold. ## Comparisons - [Scrunch pricing and 7 Scrunch alternatives compared (2026)](https://rankmonthly.com/compare/scrunch-alternatives): Scrunch Core is $250 a month for 125 prompts on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Copilot. Claude and Gemini need custom Enterprise. Trakkr and AthenaHQ cover more engines; Peec AI and Otterly.AI cost less. - [Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit alternatives and pricing: 6 tools compared (2026)](https://rankmonthly.com/compare/semrush-ai-visibility-toolkit-alternatives): Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit costs $99 a month for 25 tracked prompts. Peec AI, Otterly.AI and Trakkr are cheaper or broader, Scrunch has more prompts, Profound targets enterprise, and Ahrefs Brand Radar is the SEO-suite rival. - [AirOps alternatives and pricing: 6 tools compared, plus AirOps vs Profound (2026)](https://rankmonthly.com/compare/airops-alternatives): AirOps is a content platform for AI search with no dollar price on its pricing page. AthenaHQ, Writesonic and Trakkr also create content, with public prices. Profound, Scrunch and Peec AI focus on tracking. - [Profound pricing (2026): what is public, what is custom, and the alternatives](https://rankmonthly.com/compare/profound-pricing): Profound shows one public brand plan: a free 7-day trial. Enterprise is custom. For agencies, Agency Growth is $99 a month plus add-ons, with client workspaces at $399 a month each. Checked 1 November 2026. - [Rank Monthly vs AI visibility trackers: what each one does (2026)](https://rankmonthly.com/compare/rank-monthly-vs-ai-visibility-trackers): An AI visibility tracker shows where your brand is missing in AI answers. Rank Monthly books spots in lists from publishers in its network and reports AI mentions for those placements. One measures, the other acts. They work well together. - [PartnerStack Content Marketplace vs Rank Monthly (2026)](https://rankmonthly.com/compare/rank-monthly-vs-partnerstack): PartnerStack's Content Marketplace sells one-off content from its partners at upfront prices, paid on proof. Rank Monthly books spots in lists, LinkedIn posts and new articles, paid monthly while live. Pick PartnerStack if you use it. - [Searchable alternatives: 6 AI visibility tools compared (2026)](https://rankmonthly.com/compare/searchable-alternatives): Searchable Pro is $125 a month and includes ChatGPT, AI Overviews and Perplexity; other engines are paid add-ons. Trakkr includes 8 models for $100, Peec AI starts at $95, Otterly.AI at $29, and Ahrefs suits existing users. - [Otterly.AI alternatives: 7 AI visibility tools compared (2026)](https://rankmonthly.com/compare/otterly-ai-alternatives): Otterly.AI starts at $29 a month for 15 prompts, with Gemini, AI Mode and Claude as add-ons. HubSpot AEO gives 25 prompts for $50, Trakkr includes 8 models, and Ahrefs or Semrush suit existing users. - [Peec AI alternatives: 7 AI visibility tools compared (2026)](https://rankmonthly.com/compare/peec-ai-alternatives): Peec AI starts at $95 a month, but self-serve plans run 3 models, keep Claude for Enterprise and list Perplexity only as a paid add-on. Trakkr and AthenaHQ include both; Otterly.AI is cheaper. - [Profound alternatives: 7 AI visibility tools compared (2026)](https://rankmonthly.com/compare/profound-alternatives): Profound tracks up to nine AI engines daily but shows no public price for brands. Scrunch and Peec AI publish prices, AthenaHQ covers 11 engines, Evertune samples each prompt 100 times, and Ahrefs suits SEO teams. - [Listicle placement services compared](https://rankmonthly.com/compare/rank-monthly-vs-listicle-placement-services): Most listicle placement services sell one placement for a one-off fee, with the link guaranteed for 6 to 12 months. With Rank Monthly you pay monthly, only while your spot is live. Prices and terms below, checked at each company's own site. - [Noble vs Rank Monthly](https://rankmonthly.com/compare/rank-monthly-vs-noble): Noble buys mentions for your brand in articles AI already cites, from $2,000 a month on an annual plan. With Rank Monthly you pay monthly, only while each spot is live, with publishers who connect their own data. ## Research - [AI search statistics 2026: ChatGPT users, market share and AI Overviews](https://rankmonthly.com/research/ai-search-statistics): ChatGPT has 900M+ weekly users and 51.58% of AI chatbot use worldwide (October 2026). Gemini's app has 1B+ monthly users. AI assistants send 0.32% of web traffic, and AI Overviews cut clicks. Primary sources only. - [Listicle placement prices: what 30 sellers charge in 2026 (index)](https://rankmonthly.com/research/listicle-placement-prices): One listicle placement paid once has a median published price of $250 (18 rate cards, $110 to $1,499). Directories rent list spots for a median $99 a month. 9 of 30 sellers say paid spots are labeled. ## Tools - [Listicle spot value calculator](https://rankmonthly.com/tools/listicle-spot-value-calculator): Estimate what a spot in your list article is worth each month from its clicks, its position and your own value per click or CPM. ## Glossary - [Agentic commerce](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/agentic-commerce): Agentic commerce is shopping in which an AI agent does part of the work for a person: it finds and compares products and, with the buyer's approval, completes the purchase with the merchant. - [Agentic search](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/agentic-search): Agentic search is AI search where the model runs the search itself: it plans, sends several queries, reads the results and decides whether to search again before it answers. Some products also act on the results. - [AI agent](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/ai-agent): An AI agent is software that uses an AI model to pursue a goal for a user. It plans steps, uses tools such as search or a browser, and acts with some autonomy instead of only answering. - [AI citation](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/ai-citation): An AI citation is a link or named source that an AI assistant shows with its answer to say where a fact came from. Perplexity, Google's AI features, Microsoft Copilot and the OpenAI and Claude APIs all return cited sources. - [AI crawler](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/ai-crawler): An AI crawler is a bot run by an AI company that fetches web pages: to train models, to build an AI search index, or to read pages live when a user asks. Most purposes have their own bot. - [AI hallucination](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/hallucination): An AI hallucination is a confident answer from an AI model that sounds right but is false. OpenAI calls hallucinations "plausible but false statements generated by language models". - [AI referral traffic](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/ai-referral-traffic): AI referral traffic is the visits your website gets when people click a link in an answer from an AI assistant, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot or Claude. - [AI search engine](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/ai-search-engine): An AI search engine is a search tool that answers a question with an AI-written summary built from web pages it retrieves, usually with links to its sources, instead of only a ranked list of links. - [AI SEO](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/ai-seo): AI SEO is the work of making a brand show up in AI-powered search, such as Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search and Perplexity. The same phrase is also used for using AI tools to do SEO work. - [AI share of voice](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/ai-share-of-voice): AI share of voice is your brand's percentage of all brand mentions in AI answers to a set of prompts, compared with the competitors you track. Each tool calculates it differently, so two tools' numbers are not directly comparable. - [AI visibility](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/ai-visibility): AI visibility is how often, and how accurately, AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google's AI Overviews name, describe and link your brand when people ask questions about your category. - [AI visibility score](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/ai-visibility-score): An AI visibility score is a number a tool uses to show how often AI assistants mention your brand. There is no standard formula: some report the percentage of answers that name you, others a 0 to 100 index. - [AI visibility tracking](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/ai-visibility-tracking): AI visibility tracking is measuring, over time, how often AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot mention your brand and cite your pages, usually by running a fixed set of prompts and reading the answers. - [Alternatives page](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/alternatives-page): An alternatives page is an article that lists other products a buyer can use instead of one named product, such as "Zendesk alternatives". Vendors, review sites and independent blogs all publish them. - [Answer engine](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/answer-engine): An answer engine is a search tool that replies to a question with a direct answer instead of a list of links. Perplexity, ChatGPT search and Google's AI features are common examples. Optimizing for them is called answer engine optimization. - [Answer engine optimization (AEO)](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/answer-engine-optimization): Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the work of getting your content picked as the direct answer to a question: in a featured snippet, a Google AI Overview, a voice assistant or a chat answer from ChatGPT or Perplexity. - [Answer-first content](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/answer-first-content): Answer-first content is writing that puts the direct answer to a question in the first sentences, then adds detail. It helps readers who skim, and gives search engines and AI assistants a clear passage to quote. - [Backlink](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/backlink): A backlink is a link on another website that points to your site. Google uses links to find pages and as one signal of relevance and quality. Paid backlinks should carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". - [Best-of list](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/best-of-list): A best-of list is a ranked article that names the top options for one need, such as "best CRM for startups". Buyers read them to build a shortlist, and AI assistants often cite them in their answers. - [Bing Webmaster Tools](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/bing-webmaster-tools): Bing Webmaster Tools is Microsoft's free dashboard for site owners. It shows how a site performs in Bing search, lets you submit sitemaps and URLs, and reports how often Microsoft Copilot and Bing AI answers cite your pages. - [Brand mention](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/brand-mention): A brand mention is any place where your company or product name appears in content you do not control, such as an article, review, forum post or AI answer, with or without a link to your site. - [ChatGPT search](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/chatgpt-search): ChatGPT search is the part of OpenAI's ChatGPT that looks up current web pages while it answers and can link to the sources it used. Websites appear in it through OpenAI's search crawler, OAI-SearchBot. - [ChatGPT-User](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/chatgpt-user): ChatGPT-User is the user agent OpenAI uses when ChatGPT or a custom GPT visits a web page because a user asked something. It is not an automatic crawler, and OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply to it. - [Citation share](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/citation-share): Citation share is the percentage of all citations in a set of AI answers that point to your site. Bing Webmaster Tools calculates it per grounding query: your site's citations divided by the citations shown for all sites. - [ClaudeBot](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/claudebot): ClaudeBot is Anthropic's web crawler for model training. It collects public web content that could be used to train Anthropic's Claude models. Blocking it in robots.txt tells Anthropic to leave your site's future content out of training. - [Co-citation](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/co-citation): Co-citation is when two things are cited or named together by a third source. In SEO it means your brand appears next to known brands on the same page. The idea comes from citation research in 1973. - [Comparison page](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/comparison-page): A comparison page (or vs page) is a web page that puts two products side by side, such as "Asana vs Trello", so a buyer can see how they differ on features, price and fit, often in a table. - [Content chunking](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/content-chunking): Content chunking is splitting a document into smaller pieces, called chunks, so a retrieval system can find the relevant passage and pass it to an AI model. In SEO, it also means writing in short, self-contained sections. - [Content freshness](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/content-freshness): Content freshness is how recent and up to date a page is. Google uses freshness systems for searches where new information is expected. One large Ahrefs study found AI assistants cite somewhat newer pages than Google's organic results do. - [Domain authority](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/domain-authority): Domain authority is a score out of 100 that SEO tools give a whole website, mostly from its backlinks. Moz calls it Domain Authority, Ahrefs Domain Rating, Semrush Authority Score. They are tool scores, not Google's. - [Entity SEO](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/entity-seo): Entity SEO is the work of making search engines and AI systems understand a company, person or product as one clearly defined thing, with consistent facts and links across the web, not only as keywords on a page. - [FAQ schema](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/faq-schema): FAQ schema is schema.org FAQPage structured data that marks up the questions and answers on a page. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in May 2026, so in Google the markup no longer earns a special result. - [Featured snippet](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/featured-snippet): A featured snippet is a Google search result that shows a short excerpt from one web page first, above the link, to answer the question directly. Google picks the page; site owners cannot mark one. - [Generative engine optimization (GEO)](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/generative-engine-optimization): Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of getting your brand and content named, described correctly and cited in answers that generative AI writes, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google's AI Overviews. - [Google AI Mode](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/ai-mode): Google AI Mode is a chat-style mode in Google Search that answers longer questions with an AI-written response, links to sources and room for follow-up questions. It runs many searches at once for each question. - [Google AI Overviews](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/ai-overviews): Google AI Overviews are AI-written summaries at the top of some Google search results. They answer the question in a few lines and link to the web pages that support the answer. - [Google-Extended](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/google-extended): Google-Extended is a robots.txt token, not a separate crawler. It lets sites choose whether content Google crawls may be used to train Gemini models and to ground Gemini Apps. Google says it does not affect Google Search. - [GPTBot](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/gptbot): GPTBot is OpenAI's web crawler for model training. It collects public pages that may be used to train OpenAI's foundation models. Blocking it in robots.txt asks OpenAI not to train on your content, but keeps ChatGPT search open. - [Grounding](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/grounding): Grounding in AI is connecting a language model's answer to outside sources, such as web search results or internal documents, so the answer rests on that material and can cite it, not only on training data. - [IndexNow](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/indexnow): IndexNow is an open protocol that lets a website tell search engines right away that a URL was added, changed or deleted. Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz and Yep take part. Google is not listed. - [ItemList schema](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/itemlist-schema): ItemList schema is structured data that marks a page or part of a page as a list of items, each with a position. It uses the schema.org ItemList type with ListItem entries, and fits ranked lists such as best-of articles. - [JSON-LD](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/json-ld): JSON-LD is a W3C standard format for writing linked data in JSON. On websites it is the format Google recommends for structured data: a script block that describes the page with schema.org terms, read by machines and hidden from visitors. - [Knowledge graph](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/knowledge-graph): A knowledge graph is a knowledge base that stores entities, such as companies, people and products, as nodes and the facts that link them as edges. Google's Knowledge Graph is the best-known example in search. - [Knowledge panel](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/knowledge-panel): A knowledge panel is the information box Google shows in search results for a person, place, organization or thing. Google creates it automatically from its Knowledge Graph when enough information exists on the open web. - [Large language model (LLM)](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/large-language-model): A large language model (LLM) is an AI model trained on very large amounts of text to predict the next word or word piece, called a token. AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are built on LLMs. - [LinkedIn creator sponsorship](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/linkedin-creator-sponsorship): A LinkedIn creator sponsorship is a deal in which a brand pays a LinkedIn creator to post about its product on the creator's own profile. The post goes out from the creator, not from the brand's page or LinkedIn Ads. - [Listicle](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/listicle): A listicle is an article built as a numbered or bulleted list, such as "7 best CRM tools" or "10 Notion alternatives". Each item gets a short section of text. The word blends "list" and "article". - [LLM optimization (LLMO)](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/llm-optimization): LLM optimization (LLMO) is the work of making large language models such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini mention, describe and cite your brand correctly when people ask them questions about your category. - [llms.txt](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/llms-txt): llms.txt is a proposed Markdown file at a website's root (/llms.txt) that gives AI tools a short summary of the site and links to its most useful pages. It is a proposal, not an adopted standard. - [Newsletter sponsorship](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/newsletter-sponsorship): A newsletter sponsorship is a paid spot in an email newsletter, such as a short ad block at the top, a mention in the middle or a whole sponsored issue. The brand pays the writer to reach the newsletter's readers. - [nosnippet](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/nosnippet): nosnippet is a robots meta rule that tells Google not to show a text snippet or video preview for a page. Google says it also stops the page being used as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode. - [OAI-SearchBot](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/oai-searchbot): OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's crawler for ChatGPT search. It finds pages that ChatGPT can show and link in its search answers. OpenAI says sites that block it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. - [Organization schema](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/organization-schema): Organization schema is structured data, usually JSON-LD on a home page, that tells search engines who a company is: its name, logo, website, contact details and official profiles elsewhere. It uses the schema.org Organization type. - [Original research](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/original-research): Original research in content marketing is new data a company collects and publishes itself, such as a survey, a price study or a test. Others can cite it because the findings exist nowhere else. - [People Also Ask (PAA)](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/people-also-ask): People Also Ask (PAA) is a box in Google search results with questions related to your search. Each question opens to a short answer from a web page, with a link to it. Google picks the questions. - [Perplexity](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/perplexity): Perplexity is an AI search engine that searches the web in real time and answers in plain language, with clickable citations to the pages it used. The company calls it an answer engine. - [PerplexityBot](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/perplexitybot): PerplexityBot is Perplexity's web crawler for search. It finds and links websites in Perplexity's answers. Perplexity says it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models, and recommends allowing it in robots.txt. - [Prompt tracking](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/prompt-tracking): Prompt tracking is running a fixed set of buyer questions through AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini on a schedule, and recording whether your brand is named or linked and which sources the answers cite. - [Query fan-out](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/query-fan-out): Query fan-out is a technique AI search systems use to answer a question: they split it into subtopics, run many related searches at once, and combine the results. Google uses the term for AI Overviews and AI Mode. - [Reddit SEO](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/reddit-seo): Reddit SEO is the work of getting your brand named, fairly and openly, in the Reddit threads that rank in Google and that AI assistants cite. It means joining real conversations, not posting links. - [Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/retrieval-augmented-generation): Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is a method where an AI system first retrieves relevant text from a knowledge source, such as a document index or the web, and then gives it to a language model to write the answer. - [robots.txt](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/robots-txt): robots.txt is a plain text file at the root of a website that tells crawlers which URLs they may access. Crawlers that follow the standard read it before crawling. It is a request, not a lock. - [sameAs](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/sameas): sameAs is a schema.org property that links an entity to other web pages that unambiguously identify it, such as its Wikipedia or Wikidata entry or official social profiles. It tells machines these pages describe the same thing. - [Schema markup](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/schema-markup): Schema markup is structured data written with the schema.org vocabulary. It labels what a page is about, such as an organization, an article, a product or a set of questions, so search engines can read it as data. - [Search engine optimization (SEO)](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/search-engine-optimization): Search engine optimization (SEO) is the work of helping search engines such as Google and Bing find, understand and rank your pages, so people searching for what you offer see them in the results and visit your site. - [Search everywhere optimization](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/search-everywhere-optimization): Search everywhere optimization is SEO stretched to every place people search: Google and Bing, but also YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest and AI assistants. The goal is to reach your audience wherever they look for answers. - [SERP](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/serp): A SERP (search engine results page) is the page a search engine shows after a search. On Google it can hold text results, ads, AI Overviews, featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, images and videos. - [Share of voice](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/share-of-voice): Share of voice (SOV) is your brand's percentage of all the attention in a market. Advertisers measure it as ad spend; search and AI teams measure it as impressions, mentions or citations compared with competitors. - [Software review site](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/review-site): A software review site is a website where users rate and review business software, such as G2. Buyers use it to compare tools by category, and vendors pay for profiles, ads and review programs. - [Structured data](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/structured-data): Structured data is code on a web page that describes its content in a standard format, so search engines can read facts such as the organization, author, product or price. Most sites write it with schema.org terms in JSON-LD. - [Topical authority](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/topical-authority): Topical authority is the idea that a site known for covering one subject in depth is more likely to be trusted on that subject. Google uses "topic authority" for a news ranking system; SEO writers use it more broadly. - [Wikidata](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/wikidata): Wikidata is a free, collaborative, multilingual knowledge base that collects structured data for Wikipedia, other Wikimedia projects and anyone else. It stores facts as items with Q identifiers and statements, free to reuse under CC0. - [Zero-click search](https://rankmonthly.com/glossary/zero-click-search): A zero-click search is a search that ends without a click on any result. The searcher reads the answer on the results page, in an AI Overview, a featured snippet or another box, or searches again.