Know the Terms.
Skip the Jargon.

AI Share of Voice measures the percentage of AI-generated recommendations that mention your brand versus competitors. Traditional share of voice tracked media mentions and ad impressions. AI Share of Voice tracks who gets recommended when real people ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other AI platforms for help.

Unlike traditional market share metrics, AI Share of Voice shifts quickly. A competitor can gain visibility in weeks by improving their entity signals, structured data, and content authority. You can lose it just as fast if your online presence falls behind.

AI Visibility measures your AI Share of Voice across 7 platforms using persona-based testing. You see exactly where you rank, who outranks you, and what to change. Scout explains the gaps in plain English.

AI Visibility measures your presence in AI-generated answers. When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google Gemini for recommendations, does your business appear? Are you named directly, described indirectly, or completely absent?

Traditional search rankings still matter. But discovery is fragmenting. Some customers search Google. Some ask ChatGPT. Some do both. You need to show up in all of them.

Scout tests AI Visibility across 7 platforms: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Claude, Meta AI, Grok, and DeepSeek. Site Audit handles your SEO. AI Visibility handles your AI visibility. Scout reads both and tells you what to fix first.

Answer Engine Optimization focuses on being the answer, not just ranking in results. When AI platforms generate responses, they pull from sources they trust. AEO means structuring your content, building your authority, and establishing your entity so AI platforms cite you.

This includes structured data, authoritative backlinks, consistent NAP information, and content that directly answers common questions.

Traditional SEO and AEO work together. Site Audit audits your technical SEO foundation. AI Visibility tests whether that foundation translates into AI visibility. Scout explains which fixes matter most.

Generative Engine Optimization makes your business visible to generative AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google Gemini. Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on search engine rankings, GEO focuses on entity recognition. AI platforms need to know who you are, what you do, and why you're credible before they recommend you.

GEO includes directory listings, structured data, consistent business information, authoritative mentions, and content that establishes expertise.

GEO and SEO reinforce each other. Strong SEO builds the foundation. Strong GEO extends your reach into AI discovery. AI Visibility measures your GEO effectiveness across 7 AI platforms.

Ghost Influence is a concept we coined at Surmado to describe what happens when your business influences what AI platforms recommend, even when they don't mention you by name. For example, an AI might recommend "a taco shop in North Park with handmade tortillas" without saying the name. That's Ghost Influence. You're shaping the answer without owning it.

Ghost Influence is about recognizable attributes that map to your brand footprint, not just generic category relevance. It's not standard industry jargon yet, but it names a real pattern that existing terminology doesn't cover.

AI Visibility detects Ghost Influence by analyzing AI responses for indirect references, attribute matches, and contextual signals. High Ghost Influence means you're close to being recommended. Low Ghost Influence means you're invisible.

Lazy loading defers the download of offscreen content — images, iframes, videos — until a user scrolls near them. Instead of loading everything when the page first opens, the browser loads only what's visible. The rest loads on demand.

This directly improves page speed, Core Web Vitals, and mobile performance. For images, the standard approach is the loading="lazy" HTML attribute. For iframes (embedded maps, videos, third-party widgets), the same attribute works in modern browsers. Deferring offscreen images is one of the most common recommendations in Google Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights audits.

Site Audit checks whether your images and iframes use lazy loading correctly, flags oversized assets, and recommends modern formats like WebP and AVIF. Scout explains which fixes will have the biggest impact on your page speed scores.

NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. NAP consistency means these three pieces of information are exactly the same everywhere your business appears online — Google Business Profile, Yelp, Apple Maps, industry directories, social profiles, and your own website.

Inconsistent NAP information confuses both search engines and AI platforms. If Google finds three different phone numbers for your business, it loses confidence in your data. AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity rely on the same signals. Inconsistent NAP means lower trust, weaker entity recognition, and fewer recommendations.

Site Audit flags NAP issues in your structured data and on-page content. AI Visibility tests whether AI platforms have the right information about your business. Scout connects the dots and tells you which listings to fix first.

Open Graph is a protocol created by Facebook that lets you control the title, description, and image that appear when someone shares your URL. Without Open Graph tags, platforms guess — and they usually guess wrong. A missing og:image means no preview image. A missing og:title means a truncated URL instead of your headline.

The key Open Graph tags are og:title, og:description, og:image, and og:url. Each page on your site should have unique values. The og:image should be at least 1200×630 pixels for high-resolution displays. Open Graph tags also affect how your pages appear in Slack, LinkedIn, iMessage, and other platforms that render link previews.

Site Audit checks every page for missing or malformed Open Graph tags, validates image dimensions, and flags common issues like relative URLs or missing og:type declarations. Scout explains which pages need attention and why.

Most AI visibility tools test generic prompts like "best SEO tools" or "top marketing software." Real customers search differently. A busy restaurant owner asks different questions than a marketing agency. A first-time founder searches differently than a serial entrepreneur.

Persona-based testing uses prompts built from actual customer archetypes.

AI Visibility builds 5 distinct personas per report based on your intake form, then tests how each persona's questions get answered across 7 AI platforms. You see what your actual customers see.

Schema markup is code (usually JSON-LD) that you add to your pages to explicitly describe your content to search engines and AI platforms. Instead of guessing that a page is about a local business, a recipe, or an event, crawlers read the structured data and know for certain. Schema.org defines hundreds of types — LocalBusiness, FAQPage, Product, Service, and more.

For local businesses, LocalBusiness schema with correct NAP information, service areas, and business hours is essential. For service businesses, adding Service and Offer schemas helps search engines understand what you sell. FAQ schema can earn rich results in Google and provide training signals for AI platforms.

Site Audit validates your schema markup, checks for errors, and identifies missing schema opportunities. AI Visibility tests whether AI platforms are picking up your structured data. Scout recommends which schema types matter most for your business.

Scout is the AI research tool built into every Surmado plan. Most marketing tools give you data and expect you to figure out what it means. Scout does the research for you (AI Visibility, Site Audit, and Strategy) and delivers finished work in ~15 minutes.

Scout reads every report and remembers your brand. Ask it to prep for a client call, compare two brands, or explain what changed since last month. No dashboards. Just talk to Scout.

Scout gets smarter with every Job you run. The more context Scout has about your business, the more specific and actionable the recommendations become.

An SEO site scan crawls your website page by page, checking for technical issues that affect how search engines index and rank your content. This includes broken links, missing meta tags, slow page speed, duplicate content, redirect chains, missing alt text, and hundreds of other factors.

Most SEO scan tools give you a spreadsheet of issues sorted by severity. The problem is knowing what to fix first. A site with 200 warnings needs prioritization, not just a longer list. Some issues (like a missing canonical tag on your homepage) matter far more than others (like a missing meta description on a 404 page).

Site Audit runs a comprehensive SEO site scan and delivers prioritized recommendations instead of raw data. Scout reads the full audit and explains what to fix first, why it matters, and how to do it. No SEO expertise required.

A subprocessor is any third-party company that handles personal data on behalf of a service you use. When you sign up for a SaaS tool, that tool likely uses other services for payments, email, hosting, analytics, and authentication. Each of those services is a subprocessor.

Under GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy frameworks, companies must disclose their subprocessors so customers know who has access to their data. A subprocessor list typically includes the company name, purpose, and location. Responsible SaaS companies publish this list publicly and notify customers when it changes.

Surmado publishes a complete subprocessor list on our security page. We use Stripe for payments, Clerk for authentication, and Google Cloud for infrastructure. We do not sell your data and we minimize what we collect.

An XML sitemap is a structured file (usually at /sitemap.xml) that tells search engines which pages exist on your site, when they were last updated, and how important they are relative to each other. Search engines like Google use sitemaps to discover pages that might not be found through normal crawling, especially on large or new sites.

A good XML sitemap includes only indexable, canonical pages. It excludes redirects, noindex pages, and duplicate URLs. It stays under the 50,000 URL / 50 MB limit per file. For sites with multiple languages, a sitemap can include hreflang annotations to help Google serve the right language version.

Site Audit checks whether your sitemap exists, validates its structure, and flags issues like broken URLs, missing pages, or sitemap-index mismatches. Scout explains which sitemap issues are blocking your indexing and what to fix.

Zero-click search happens when someone gets the information they need without visiting your website. Google's featured snippets, AI Overviews, and direct answers all contribute to zero-click search. So do AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

For businesses, this means traditional traffic metrics are becoming less reliable. Someone might learn about you, trust you, and choose you without ever visiting your site.

AI Visibility tests whether you appear in these zero-click environments. Site Audit audits whether your content is structured to be featured. Scout helps you prioritize what to fix.