AEO
answer-engine-optimization, zero-clickDefinition
Answer engine optimization — shaping a page so that a search engine or a voice assistant can lift one passage from it as the direct answer, shown or spoken without a click: a featured snippet, a knowledge panel, a Siri reply
The middle rung of three. SEO wants the page ranked among the links; AEO wants a passage extracted as the answer; GEO wants a generative model to understand, summarize and cite the source. What AEO rewards is a question answered in its first sentence, a heading that is the question, structured data that says what kind of thing the page is, and a definition short enough to read aloud. The cost is that a good answer is a zero-click answer — the reader may never arrive.
Write the answer first, then the argument. An answer engine reads the way a hurried person does — the first sentence under the heading that matches the question — and a page whose first sentence is throat-clearing is a page that gets summarized by someone else's.
This glossary is the site's AEO surface by construction: every entry leads with a one-sentence meaning, and that sentence is the one an engine would lift.