Terms, clarified.
From GEO to records of processing activities: the technical terms from my consulting fields, each answered in the first sentence, to look up, link and cite. Every term has its own anchor.
§GEO & AI search
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
GEO is the practice of optimising content and websites so that AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini name them in an answer or cite them as a source. Where SEO competes for positions in Google's result lists, GEO competes for the one answer an AI gives, through direct answers, machine-readable structure and citable authority.
AI visibility
AI visibility describes whether, and how often, a company appears in the answers of AI assistants when users ask about its services. You can test it by putting your own customers' questions to the AIs, or with a structured self-test such as the AI Visibility Check.
AI monitoring (LLM monitoring)
AI monitoring, also called LLM monitoring, is the repeated measurement of whether and how a company is named in the answers of AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini. It only becomes reliable with a fixed question set, neutral measurement conditions and a score with a denominator; how to do it without a tool is shown in the article Testing your AI visibility yourself.
AI Overviews
AI Overviews are the AI-generated answer boxes Google displays above the classic search results. They summarise and link content from several sources, whoever gets cited there is visible before the first regular result.
Local pack
The local pack is the map block with three business listings that Google shows above the regular results for location-based queries. It matters for AI visibility because AI assistants display this block for regional questions and can lift category, address and star rating from it into their answer; it is maintained not on your own website but in the business profile held by the map service.
llms.txt
llms.txt is a text file in a website's root directory that gives AI systems a curated, machine-readable overview of its most important content, comparable to a sitemap, but written for language models. It is a young, voluntary standard of GEO practice.
AI crawlers
AI crawlers are the collection programs run by AI providers: GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic) or PerplexityBot, for instance, that gather web content for training and answer generation. Whether they may read a website is controlled by its robots.txt; anyone who wants to appear in AI answers shouldn't lock them out.
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, the criteria Google (and increasingly AI systems) use to judge how reliable content and its authors are. Demonstrable hands-on experience and verifiable facts count for more than self-praise.
Answer-first content
Answer-first is the content format in which a page's core question is answered completely in the first two to four sentences, before context and detail follow. It is the format AI assistants and answer boxes prefer to cite.
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard through which AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT use external tools and data sources right inside a conversation. For websites this means: whoever offers their own MCP server turns from a citable source into an active point of information for AI agents. This website runs its own MCP server with six tools.
Agentic web
The agentic web is the phase of the internet in which AI agents operate websites on behalf of people instead of people clicking themselves: searching, comparing, adding to the basket, sometimes paying. Users delegate an intent and the agent carries out the steps. It is described as the third stage after the PC web and the mobile web. What this means for websites and online shops is covered in the article The Agentic Web.
Agentic commerce
Agentic commerce refers to purchases initiated or completed by an AI agent on someone’s behalf. Dedicated standards are emerging for it, such as the Agentic Commerce Protocol by Stripe and OpenAI and Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol, where merchants publish their capabilities in a profile at /.well-known/ucp. The merchant remains the merchant of record and can decline transactions per agent.
A2A (Agent2Agent)
A2A (Agent2Agent) is an open protocol through which AI agents communicate with other agents rather than only calling tools. An agent publishes an agent card at /.well-known/agent-card.json describing its capabilities. Where MCP connects an assistant to tools, A2A connects agents to each other. This website runs an A2A endpoint alongside MCP.
§Data protection
GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the EU regulation that has governed the handling of personal data since May 2018, for every company that processes such data, regardless of size. Core obligations include a legal basis for every processing activity, information duties, data subject rights and documented accountability.
Data processing agreement (DPA)
A data processing agreement is the contract required by Art. 28 GDPR between a company and every service provider that processes personal data on its behalf, hosting, cloud or newsletter providers, for instance. Without a DPA, the arrangement is unlawful under data protection law.
Sub-processor
A sub-processor is a further service provider that your processor brings in for parts of the processing, for example the data centre behind a cloud service. Under Article 28(2) GDPR it may only be engaged with the prior written authorisation of the controller; with a general authorisation, every intended change must be notified and the controller can object.
Standard contractual clauses (SCC)
Standard contractual clauses are contract templates pre-drafted by the European Commission for the transfer of personal data. For processing within the EU and the EEA, Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/915 applies; it covers the mandatory content required by Article 28 GDPR and is the common alternative to an individually drafted contract.
Records of processing activities
The records of processing activities (Art. 30 GDPR) are the internal documentation of every process in which a company handles personal data, including purposes, data categories, recipients and retention periods. They are the centrepiece of the GDPR's accountability obligation and usually the first step of any implementation.
Technical and organisational measures (TOMs)
TOMs are the safeguards required by Art. 32 GDPR with which a company protects personal data, from access rights, encryption and backups through to staff training. They must be documented and proportionate to the risk.
Data subject rights
Data subject rights are the claims every person holds against companies that process their data: access, rectification, erasure, restriction, data portability and objection. Companies must generally answer requests within one month, a defined process for this is mandatory.
Data protection officer
A data protection officer is the person who monitors GDPR compliance within a company. Appointment is mandatory, among other cases, where sensitive data is processed at scale or people are systematically monitored, many SMEs don't need one, but they very much need someone who owns data protection.
Data breach
A data breach is any violation of the security of personal data, from a hacked account to an email sent to the wrong distribution list. Reportable incidents must be notified to the data protection authority within 72 hours; a prepared process decides whether that deadline is achievable.
§Funding & SMEs
KMU.DIGITAL
KMU.DIGITAL is the funding programme run by the Austrian Ministry of Economic Affairs and the WKO that subsidised digitalisation consulting for Austrian small and medium-sized businesses through certified consultants. It funded status and potential analyses, strategy consultations and subsequent implementation projects. According to kmudigital.at the programme will not be continued from 2027, and the 4.0 budget is exhausted (as at 21 September 2026).
Potential analysis (KMU.DIGITAL)
The status and potential analysis is the funded entry point into KMU.DIGITAL: a structured assessment of where a business stands on digitalisation and which measures offer the greatest leverage. In the 4.0 round it was funded at 80% of consulting costs (max. €400); the programme will not be continued from 2027.
Strategy consultation (KMU.DIGITAL)
The strategy consultation is the in-depth KMU.DIGITAL consulting stage: the results of the potential analysis become a concrete digitalisation concept with prioritised measures. In the 4.0 round it was funded at 50% (max. €1,000) and was usually a prerequisite for implementation funding; the programme will not be continued from 2027.
Implementation funding (KMU.DIGITAL)
Implementation funding subsidises the actual realisation of digitalisation projects that emerge from a funded KMU.DIGITAL consultation, at 30% of project costs (4.0 round: max. €6,000; the programme will not be continued from 2027). Set the project up to comply with the funding rules from day one and you leave no money on the table.
KMU.DIGITAL & GREEN
KMU.DIGITAL & GREEN is the funding track for digitalisation projects with a sustainability contribution, energy efficiency, circular economy or resource savings, for instance. The same funding rates applied as in the base programme; the track ends with the programme and will not be continued from 2027.
Certified Digital Consultant
Certified Digital Consultant (CDC) is the certification that qualifies consultants for KMU.DIGITAL engagements; only listed consultants may deliver funded consultations. The certification is tied to consulting fields, such as business models & processes.
KMU.DIGITAL consultant selection
The KMU.DIGITAL consultant selection is the official search run by the Austrian Chamber of Commerce listing every consultant approved for the funding programme; a consultant who is not on it may not deliver funded consultations. It filters by location, sector focus, regional focus and certificate, and the green track has its own list. It is an eligibility list rather than a ranking, so it says nothing about experience or sector depth.
De minimis aid
De minimis aid is public funding small enough that it needs no state aid clearance under EU rules; what matters is a ceiling per company across three rolling years (300,000 euros per the KMU.DIGITAL guideline, as at January 2024). Anyone combining several federal and provincial grants should keep a running total, because it caps every further award.
§Sales & marketing
Performance Sales
Performance Sales is sales work aligned rigorously with measurable results, pipeline, close rates, revenue, rather than with activity. Positioning, sales collateral and campaigns are treated as one system that turns attention into revenue.
Positioning
Positioning is the decision about what a company should stand for, and what it explicitly should not. A sound positioning answers in one sentence why a particular customer should buy here, of all places; everything else in marketing follows from it.
Sales enablement
Sales enablement covers all the content and tools that make salespeople effective in customer conversations: pitch decks, battle cards, objection handling, reference lists. Good enablement translates strategy into material that actually gets used in the meeting.
Pillar page
A pillar page is a comprehensive overview page that covers a core topic in full and links out to in-depth individual articles, the centre of a topic cluster. Search engines and AIs read topical authority from it.
Topic cluster
A topic cluster is the content architecture of one central pillar page and several linked detail articles on the same subject area. The internal linking signals depth and coherence to search systems, and spreads visibility across every piece in the cluster.
Conversion
Conversion is the moment a visitor becomes a lead or a customer, through a booking or an enquiry, for instance. Conversion optimisation means pointing every page at exactly one desired next action and removing everything that distracts from it.
Responsible gambling
Responsible gambling covers every measure a betting or gaming operator takes to prevent problematic play and make it easier for affected players to stop: age and identity verification, deposit and stake limits, self-exclusion, information on winning and losing probabilities, and pointers to counselling and treatment. In Germany, section 7 GlüStV 2021 obliges operators to inform players about addiction risks, the ban on participation by minors and available help before they play.
Battle card
A battle card is a one-page sales document that bundles your arguments against one specific competitor: their strengths and weaknesses, the typical objections and the answers to them, plus a short comparison of scope. It is working material for the customer conversation, not a marketing piece, and it goes out of date as soon as the competitor changes their offer.
Earned media
Earned media is attention a company neither buys nor publishes itself, but earns: editorial coverage, quotes in trade media, recommendations and mentions by third parties. Together with paid media (bought reach such as ads) and owned media (own channels such as the website or newsletter) it forms the three media types of communication; its value lies in the credibility of someone else's voice.
§Technology
Schema.org / structured data
Structured data based on Schema.org is machine-readable supplementary information in a website's source code that tells search engines and AIs explicitly what a piece of content is, a company, an FAQ, an article, a service. It is a basic prerequisite for being cited and displayed correctly.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are Google's metrics for a website's user experience: loading speed (LCP), interactivity (INP) and visual stability (CLS). They feed into rankings and can be measured reproducibly with tools such as Lighthouse.
hreflang
hreflang is the HTML annotation that tells search engines which language versions of a page exist and which version is intended for which users. Without correct hreflang pairs, language versions compete against each other instead of complementing one another.
CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service)
CPaaS is a cloud platform that lets companies build communication features such as SMS, voice calls, video or messaging into their own software through an API, instead of running their own telecoms infrastructure. Billing is usually based on usage, for example per message or per call minute.
Trader status
Trader status is the declaration of whether someone distributes an app or product commercially: Articles 30 and 31 of the Digital Services Act oblige platforms such as the App Store to verify such traders' contact details and display them on the product page. Apple has required the declaration from all developers since 17 February 2025, including those who do not distribute in the EU; individuals must disclose an address or P.O. box, a phone number and an email address (source: developer.apple.com).