Terminology

Reading copy: https://www.vgoframework.org/docs/terminology Version: VGO V1.0 published methodology; v1.0.0-draft remains a historical snapshot.

VGO — Visibility Growth Optimization; the machine-world visibility governance system for effective visibility growth. Trusted Visibility — Visibility that is verifiable, relevant, accurate and supported by credible sources. Discovery Surface — An interface through which people or machines discover entities or information, including search, AI answers and agents. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) — Improving the presentation, accuracy and verifiability of direct answers; overlaps with GEO in generative answer contexts. Effective AEO — Accurate, useful and verifiable information correctly selected and presented in relevant direct answers; a single appearance does not establish effectiveness. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) — The general discipline of improving visibility and representation in generative systems, including understanding, mentions, citations, comparisons and recommendations. GEO 2.0 — Our GEO method and capability approach within VGO, grounded in decision scenarios, verified facts, evidence, prioritized action, ongoing verification and maintenance. It is not the whole of VGO, a new VGO version or an industry-wide version standard. Effective GEO — The intended outcome: being correctly understood, credibly cited, fairly compared and appropriately recommended in valuable generative scenarios. GEO 2.0 is the method for pursuing it. Generative Visibility — The extent to which an entity is understood, mentioned or cited in generative answers. Visibility Share — An entity’s share of visibility within a declared query/prompt sample and time window. Citation Share — Relative citation presence within a declared sample. Entity Consistency — Consistency of names, attributes, relationships and official sources across sources. Visibility Integrity — Accuracy, traceable provenance and resistance to manipulation. Poisoning — Malicious, deceptive or manipulative attempts to influence retrieval, understanding or generation; not all errors or negative information are poisoning. VGO — The governance system organizing VGO strategy, action, measurement and defense.

GEO 2.0 method · Capability relationships

Sustained growth — A long-term objective pursued through repeated optimization, verification and correction; not a promise of monotonic increases.

Governance — Accountability for facts, authorization, evidence lineage, versions, risk and correction across the optimization lifecycle.