Glossary · 40 terms
AI, digital marketing and home services glossary
Citable definitions for AEO, GEO, LLM citability, AI receptionist, schema markup and the rest of the terms the sector needs to understand.
AI, GEO and AEO11
AEO
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the discipline of structuring and formatting content so that AI-powered tools — including ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — select and cite it as the direct answer to a user query, bypassing the need for a click. AEO complements traditional SEO by prioritizing semantic structure, verifiable authority, and citation-readiness over click-through rate.
AI Mode Google
AI Mode is Google's advanced conversational search interface, launched in the United States in May 2025 at Google I/O. It operates via query fan-out: it decomposes the user's query into multiple simultaneous sub-queries processed by Gemini 2.0, supports follow-up questions, and generates responses with deep reasoning. Its thematic search mechanism is documented in US patent US20240329934A1.
AI Overviews
AI Overviews is the Google Search feature that generates automatic summaries at the top of search results using the Gemini model via retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) over live-indexed web pages. Launched in May 2024 as the successor to Search Generative Experience (SGE), it was available in more than 200 countries and 40 languages by May 2025. It occupies the zero position in the SERP, above ads and organic results.
citability
Citability is the set of content properties that determine whether a large language model selects a piece of content as a cited source when generating a response. The factors with the strongest empirical support are third-party media coverage from high-credibility outlets, original statistics density, clear semantic structure, and entity clarity. The Princeton GEO study (Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024) demonstrated that adding original statistics improves visibility in generative engines by 30 to 40 percent.
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It is the evaluative framework Google's human quality raters use to assess content quality, as documented in the Search Quality Rater Guidelines. The first E — Experience — was added in December 2022 to reward first-hand, lived knowledge over purely academic expertise. Although E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor with a numerical score, it shapes the training data that informs how Google's ranking systems interpret topical authority, and it is the primary lens through which AI assistants decide whether a source is citable in a generated response.
fan-out query
A fan-out query is the technique by which an AI search engine automatically decomposes a complex user query into multiple independent sub-queries, executes them in parallel against different sources, and synthesizes the results into a single response. At Google I/O 2025, Search VP Elizabeth Reid described this technique as the core of Google AI Mode. An Ahrefs analysis (2026) found an average of 9 to 11 sub-queries generated per prompt, with some prompts reaching 28.
GEO
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of optimizing web content to increase its visibility and citation frequency in responses generated by AI-powered search engines. The founding academic paper was published in November 2023 by Aggarwal et al. (Princeton and Allen Institute for AI, arXiv:2311.09735) and presented at ACM KDD 2024. It demonstrated visibility gains of up to 41% from adding verified statistics and up to 115% from incorporating external citations.
LLM hallucination
LLM hallucination is the phenomenon by which a large language model generates grammatically correct and plausible-sounding content that is factually wrong, unverifiable, or contradictory to reality. It is classified into factuality hallucination (the model asserts something false) and faithfulness hallucination (the model ignores or contradicts the supplied context). It is the structural limitation most relevant to evaluating the reliability of generative search engines and the sources they cite.
llms.txt
llms.txt is a plain-text file placed at a website's root that gives large language models a structured, markdown-formatted index of the site's most important content. Proposed by Jeremy Howard in September 2024 as an emerging standard, it had been adopted by over 844,000 sites by November 2025 according to BuiltWith. However, a ten-week Search Engine Land experiment found no detectable crawling of the file by any of the four major AI engines.
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) is an architecture that combines a generative language model with an external information retrieval module. Rather than responding solely from parametric knowledge, the model retrieves relevant text fragments from an external knowledge base at inference time and uses them as context to generate the response. RAG is the most widely adopted technical strategy for reducing hallucinations and keeping an LLM's knowledge current without retraining.
Share of Voice AI / Share of Citation
Share of Citation (SoC) is the percentage of AI-generated responses, within a fixed query set, in which a specific brand or domain appears as a cited source. Unlike classic Share of Voice — which counts media mentions and organic positions — SoC measures source selection: whether the model picks you or not. Research analyzing 366,087 citations in AI search shows citation distribution is extremely concentrated, making this metric a zero-sum game among competitors.
Home services and construction21
AI phone receptionist
An AI phone receptionist is a voice-AI system that answers inbound business calls in real time, qualifies the caller's intent, captures contact and job details, and either books an appointment directly into the business calendar or routes the call to a human technician when the situation requires it. Unlike a recorded IVR (interactive voice response) menu, an AI receptionist holds a natural, two-way conversation and adapts its questions to the caller's responses. For home-services companies — plumbers, electricians, HVAC contractors — it eliminates missed calls outside office hours, the leading cause of lost leads in the sector.
Angi Leads
Angi Leads is the pay-per-lead marketplace operated by Angi Inc. (formerly ANGI Homeservices, a 2017 merger of Angie's List and HomeAdvisor). Since March 2025, Angi Inc. operates as an independent publicly traded company after completing its spin-off from IAC. The platform distributes shared consumer job requests to multiple pre-screened contractors simultaneously; each contractor pays per lead received regardless of whether they win the job.
Bark Leads
Bark Leads refers to the lead generation model offered by Bark.com, an online services marketplace founded in 2014 in London by Andrew Michael and Kai Feller and acquired by EMK Capital in 2022. Bark operates in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and other markets. Contractors purchase platform credits and spend them to respond to consumer job requests. The cost in credits per lead varies by service category, job size, and geographic supply and demand. There is no pay-per-click or subscription required to access leads.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total marketing and sales spend divided by the number of new customers won in a given period. In home services — plumbers, HVAC contractors, remodelers, flooring installers — CAC is channel-sensitive: paid local search leads can cost three to five times more than leads from well-ranked organic content. Tracking CAC by channel determines whether growth is profitable or cash-destructive. A healthy CAC is always evaluated against Lifetime Value (LTV).
exclusive vs shared leads
An exclusive lead is a service request delivered to a single contractor: the homeowner speaks only with that business. A shared lead is the same request distributed simultaneously to multiple competing contractors. The distinction determines expected conversion rate, the admissible cost per lead, and the sales follow-up strategy required. In the home-services sector, exclusive leads typically cost two to four times more than shared ones, but their probability of converting into a booked job is proportionally higher.
FieldEdge
FieldEdge is a field service management platform purpose-built for HVAC and plumbing contractors. It claims to be the first company to fully integrate QuickBooks accounting software with field service management, offering real-time two-way sync with both QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online. The platform targets residential and light-commercial service businesses with five to fifty technicians and includes flat-rate pricing, service agreements, scheduling, dispatch, and technician performance scorecards.
Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the free listing that controls how a local business appears in Google Search and Google Maps. It displays the business name, address or service area, phone number, hours, service categories, photos, and customer reviews. For home service contractors, it is the single most important digital asset for capturing local search intent: a well-maintained profile with strong reviews appears in the local map pack, which sits above organic results for most near-me and city-service queries.
Google Local Pack
The Google Local Pack is a block of up to three business listings that appears in search results when a query has local intent — for example, 'plumber near me' or 'HVAC repair Chicago'. It includes a map snippet, business name, average star rating, address, and a link to Google Maps. The Local Pack sits above conventional organic results and captures the majority of clicks for home-service searches. Businesses appear based on relevance, distance, and prominence — not on paid bids.
Google Screened
Google Screened is a verification badge that Google displayed on Local Services Ads profiles for certain professional categories — including home-service contractors — after the business passed background checks, license verification, and insurance confirmation. The badge signaled to homeowners that Google had verified the business's credentials. As of October 2025, Google unified its verification badges under the single label 'Google Verified,' replacing earlier distinctions between Screened and Guaranteed. The verification requirements remain substantially the same.
HomeAdvisor
HomeAdvisor is a US online marketplace for home services originally launched as ServiceMagic in 1998. IAC acquired it in 2004 and renamed it HomeAdvisor in 2012. In 2017, IAC merged HomeAdvisor with Angie's List to form ANGI Homeservices Inc., rebranded as Angi Inc. in 2021. HomeAdvisor continues as a consumer-facing brand under Angi Inc., operating a pay-per-lead model that distributes homeowner project requests to multiple local contractors who are charged per lead distributed.
Housecall Pro
Housecall Pro is a cloud-based field service management and CRM platform built for home service businesses ranging from solo operators to teams of 100 or more. It covers scheduling, dispatching, invoicing, payment processing, two-way QuickBooks sync, automated customer follow-up, and a rebuilt mobile app released in 2026. It serves trades including HVAC, plumbing, electrical, cleaning, landscaping, and pest control.
Houzz for Pros
Houzz for Pros (marketed as Houzz Pro) is the professional subscription platform operated by Houzz Inc., a privately held US company founded in 2009 by Adi Tatarko and Alon Cohen and headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Unlike pure pay-per-lead marketplaces, Houzz Pro charges a flat monthly subscription that bundles lead generation, project management tools, client communication, and business software into a single product tier. Lead distribution is included in the subscription rather than billed per contact.
Jobber
Jobber is a cloud-based field service management platform built for small home service businesses. Founded in 2011 in Edmonton, Canada, it brings quoting, scheduling, job management, invoicing, payments, and client communication into one place. It is used by more than 200,000 service professionals across trades such as HVAC, plumbing, electrical, lawn care, and cleaning, with pricing starting at $49 per month.
lead aggregator
A lead aggregator is a platform that captures service-request forms from homeowners looking for a contractor — plumber, electrician, roofer, remodeler — and distributes those requests to multiple competing businesses simultaneously. The aggregator invests in advertising to attract demand, filters requests by service type and zip code, and charges contractors per lead received. Because the same request goes to several providers at once, every lead is shared by definition.
Local Services Ads (LSA)
Google Local Services Ads (LSA) are pay-per-lead ads that appear above all other Google results — including standard Search ads and organic listings — when a user searches for a nearby home service. Advertisers pay only when a qualified lead contacts them via call or message through the ad. To run LSAs, businesses must pass a Google screening process covering identity verification, business registration, insurance, and licensing. Verified businesses earn the Google Guaranteed or Google Screened badge.
missed call rate
Missed call rate is the percentage of inbound calls that go unanswered out of all calls received in a given period. In home services — plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, remodelers — every missed call is a potential job that defaults to a competitor who picks up. Because phone calls remain the dominant first-contact channel for local service requests, a high missed call rate translates directly into lost revenue and wasted advertising spend.
NAP consistency
NAP consistency means that a business's Name, Address, and Phone number are written identically across every online platform where it appears: Google Business Profile, Yelp, Angi, the Better Business Bureau, trade directories, and the business's own website. Any variation — a missing suite number, an abbreviated street name, a phone number with or without an area code — creates conflicting signals for Google's local ranking algorithm and reduces the probability of appearing in the local map pack.
Porch Leads
Porch Leads refers to the contractor lead generation service operated by Porch Group (NASDAQ: PRCH), a home services platform that connects homeowners with local professionals across more than 1,100 service categories. Leads originate from homeowners who request quotes on Porch.com and from retail partners including Lowe's, Walmart, and Wayfair. Contractors receive matched leads by email, text, or direct phone call and can buy individually or set a monthly budget. The Porch Pro Network includes more than 300,000 home professionals.
ServiceTitan
ServiceTitan is an end-to-end field service management platform built for residential and commercial contractors in trades such as HVAC, plumbing, and electrical. Founded in 2012 and listed on NASDAQ in December 2024 (ticker: TTAN), it combines scheduling, dispatching, flat-rate pricebook, marketing attribution, and real-time reporting in a single cloud platform. It targets mid-to-large contractor businesses and is used by more than 100,000 technicians across North America.
Thumbtack Pro
Thumbtack Pro is the professional-facing side of Thumbtack, a US online marketplace founded in 2008 that connects consumers with local service providers across home services, events, wellness, and lessons. Thumbtack operates on a pay-per-lead model with no mandatory subscription: contractors pay only when a homeowner contacts them. Lead prices are set dynamically each week based on job value, trade category, geographic market, and competitive supply.
Yelp for Services
Yelp for Services — accessed through the 'Request a Quote' feature on Yelp business profiles — is the service-lead component of the Yelp platform. Homeowners can send a project request directly to a specific contractor via their Yelp profile, or submit a request that Yelp routes to multiple matching businesses. Contractors pay to be discoverable and, on certain plans, pay per lead or per contact received. Yelp's core asset is its review database; the services lead layer sits on top of that trust infrastructure.
Schema and web tech8
DefinedTerm schema
DefinedTerm schema is a Schema.org type used to mark up a specific word, phrase, or concept that is formally defined within the context of a DefinedTermSet or glossary. It links a term's name and description to the collection it belongs to, giving search engines and AI systems a machine-readable signal that a page is an authoritative source for the definition of that concept. This type is especially relevant for glossary pages, knowledge bases, and specialized vocabulary resources.
FAQPage schema
FAQPage schema is a Schema.org structured data type that lets webmasters mark up a list of questions and their answers directly on a web page. Google can use this markup to display expandable question-and-answer pairs beneath the page title in search results, increasing visual prominence without requiring a position change. In the era of generative search, FAQPage markup also signals to AI systems which questions a page authoritatively answers.
HowTo schema
HowTo schema is a Schema.org structured data type for marking up step-by-step instructional content. It tells search engines and AI systems that a page describes a procedure for accomplishing a specific task, listing the individual steps, optional tools, materials, estimated time, and cost. Google can use HowTo markup to render rich results that display the steps directly in the SERP, making instructional pages more visible and easier to consume without a click.
JSON-LD
JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is a W3C standard serialisation format for Linked Data that uses plain JSON with a special @context key to attach meaning to data fields. In web SEO, JSON-LD is the recommended method for embedding Schema.org structured data into HTML pages. Because the block lives inside a <script> tag and never touches the visible markup, it can be injected server-side or at build time without altering design. Google, Bing, and AI assistants parse JSON-LD to extract verified entity facts — business name, address, reviews, products — and use them in rich results and knowledge-graph entries.
LocalBusiness schema
LocalBusiness schema is a structured data vocabulary from Schema.org that lets businesses annotate their web pages with machine-readable information about name, address, phone number, opening hours, geo-coordinates, and service area. Search engines and AI assistants use this markup to populate local packs, knowledge panels, and voice answers without revisiting the page. Correct implementation combined with consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) data across the web is the single highest-signal technical action for local visibility in both classic search and AI-generated responses as of 2026.
Organization schema
Organization schema is a Schema.org type that describes a company, nonprofit, government body, or other formal organization. It enables webmasters to declare authoritative, machine-readable facts about an entity—its legal name, logo, contact information, social profiles, and founding details—directly on the website. Search engines and AI systems use this data to populate knowledge panels, verify entity identity, and attribute content to a known, trustworthy source rather than an anonymous web page.
sameAs
sameAs is a Schema.org property that declares two or more web resources refer to the same real-world entity. By listing URLs of authoritative profiles — Google Business Profile, Wikidata, LinkedIn, industry directories — inside a LocalBusiness or Person schema block, a business tells the Knowledge Graph that all those profiles describe one entity, not several. This entity disambiguation is the foundation of knowledge-panel eligibility and a key signal that AI assistants use when deciding whether to cite a business in a generated answer.
Schema markup
Schema markup is a structured data vocabulary co-founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex that lets webmasters annotate HTML content with machine-readable semantic metadata. Expressed in JSON-LD, Microdata, or RDFa and embedded in a page, it tells search engines, AI assistants, and knowledge aggregators exactly what type of entity a page describes. Google uses schema markup to generate rich results and to feed generative AI answers with citable, factual signals.