Answer Box
A boxed answer at the top of a results page, lifted from one page and credited to it. Winning one usually means having answered the question plainly and early rather than burying it.
Related terms
LocalBusiness Schema
Organization markup with the details a local search needs — address, opening hours, service area, price range. What lets an assistant answer “is there one near me, and are they open now?”
Speakable Schema
Markup identifying the parts of a page suitable to be read aloud by a voice assistant. Narrow in application, but it removes the guesswork about which sentence answers the question.
AI Brand Mention
Your business being named in an AI answer, with or without a link. Worth tracking separately from traffic, because a mention can win the customer without ever producing a click.
sameAs
A structured-data property that links your business to its profiles elsewhere — Facebook, LinkedIn, a directory. It is how a model confirms you exist in more than one place, which makes it far likelier to name you.
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
An open standard for connecting AI assistants to outside tools and data in a consistent way. It matters to businesses because it is how an assistant might one day query your booking system directly.
Query Fan-Out
When an assistant turns one question into several searches behind the scenes, then combines what it finds. It means your page can be pulled into an answer about a question you never targeted.