This glossary brings together the terms you'll see in Klarvu and our documentation. Many appear in English in the app, so we've kept the original names and explained what they mean. For more detailed information, see the individual pages covering each feature or topic.
The basics
| Term | Explanation |
|---|
| GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) | The practice of making a business easier for AI systems to discover, understand, and recommend. |
| Prompt | A question Klarvu asks AI platforms on behalf of your potential customers. Each prompt is sent as a new, independent question with web search and no previous conversation. |
| "Answer" | The response an AI platform generates for a prompt. One answer means one prompt sent to one platform on one day. |
| Tracking run | When Klarvu sends your prompts to AI platforms. The first run starts immediately; during the trial, subsequent runs happen nightly at 00:01 in your time zone after email verification, while paid subscriptions support "daily", "every 3 days", "weekly", or "manual" schedules per brand. |
| AI platform / AI engine | The AI services Klarvu tracks: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. |
| Google AI Overviews | Google's AI-generated summaries in search results, where Klarvu uses your prompt as a Google search query. If Google doesn't display an AI Overview, Klarvu records it as a valid result rather than an error. |
| Market | The country and language in which your prompts are submitted. The country determines where AI responds from, not where your business is physically located. |
Prompts and organization
| Term | Explanation |
|---|
| Branded / unbranded prompt | A branded prompt mentions your brand, while an unbranded prompt doesn't mention your brand or its products. "Home" and "Competitors" use only unbranded prompts for their metrics. |
| "Topics" | The subject areas covered by your prompts. Each prompt belongs to one topic. |
| "Personas" | The types of customers or decision-makers a question is relevant to, such as a CFO or freelancer. |
| "Stages" | Where a question fits in the buying journey. The default stages are "Informational" (researching), "Commercial" (comparing options), and "Transactional" (ready to buy or sign up). |
| "Tags" | Custom labels you create to organize and filter your prompts. |
| Focus: "Research", "Compare options", "Take action" | Your choice during setup, which determines the type of customer questions Klarvu emphasizes. "Compare options" is the default. |
| "Suggest more" / "Add prompt" | "Suggest more" generates additional prompt suggestions based on your topics and personas. "Add prompt" lets you write your own questions. |
| "Edit prompt" | Changes a prompt's settings, such as its topic, persona, stage, countries, AI platforms, and tags. The wording itself can't be changed once tracking has started – a new wording is added as a new prompt. |
| "Remove" | Archives a prompt so it stops running while preserving its historical answers and analysis. You can restore it from "Archived". |
| "Delete permanently" | Permanently deletes a prompt and all its associated answers and analysis. Only owners and administrators can perform this action, and it cannot be undone. |
Metrics
| Term | Explanation |
|---|
| "Mention" | When your brand appears in an AI-generated answer. Klarvu detects your brand name and added alternative names without distinguishing uppercase and lowercase letters unless "Case Sensitive Matching" is enabled. |
| "Mention rate" | The percentage of analyzed AI answers that mention your brand. Your brand and competitors are measured using the same answers, making the percentages directly comparable. |
| "Share of voice" | The section on "Competitors" where you compare your brand's mention rate with those of your competitors. |
| "Rank vs competitors" / "Your rank" | Your position among tracked companies, ranked by mention rate. |
| "Named first" | The percentage of answers in which a company is mentioned before all other tracked companies. Only answers mentioning at least two tracked companies are included. |
| "Avg. position" | A company's average position among tracked companies, based on its first mention in each answer. A position of 1.0 is best. |
| Percentage points | Used to express changes between percentages. An increase in mention rate from 30% to 35% is a change of +5 percentage points. |
| Time period | The selected reporting window: 7, 14, 30, or 90 days. Changes are compared with the immediately preceding period of the same length. |
How AI describes your brand
| Term | Explanation |
|---|
| Sentiment | How AI describes your brand: "Positive", "Neutral", "Negative", "Mixed", or "Unclear". If your brand isn't mentioned, no sentiment is recorded, and the answer is labeled "Not mentioned". |
| "Positive sentiment" | The percentage of answers mentioning your brand that describe it positively. |
| "Recommended" / "Discussed" / "Discouraged" | Indicates whether AI directly recommends your brand, mentions or discusses it without a direct recommendation, or advises against it. |
| "Recommended" (metric) | The percentage of answers mentioning your brand that also directly recommend it. |
Sources
| Term | Explanation |
|---|
| Source / citation | A page that an AI answer references or links to. One citation is one reference in one answer. |
| Domain | The website where a source is hosted, such as a review platform or industry publication. |
| Source category | Klarvu's classification of sources: "Brand", "Competitor", "Review Platform", "News & Media", "Forum/Community", "Social Media", "Reference", and "Other". |
| "Brand citation %" | The percentage of AI answers citing a particular source that also mention your brand. |
| "Sources that favour competitors" | Cited pages that either belong to a competitor or mention a competitor without mentioning your brand. |
| "Your pages" | An overview of pages from your own website, including added subdomains and additional websites, showing which ones AI cites. |
| "Pending analysis" / "Analysis failed" | "Pending analysis" means a source hasn't been analyzed yet. "Analysis failed" means Klarvu couldn't retrieve or analyze the page. |
| Crawl | Klarvu's process of examining the pages on your website under "Site maps". A crawl is required before Klarvu can display pages that AI has never cited. |
Competitors and brands
| Term | Explanation |
|---|
| Competitor | A company you track and compare with your brand. Only added competitors are included in rankings and competitor comparisons. |
| "Alternative Brand Names" / "Alternative Names" | Other names, abbreviations, or spellings that should also count as mentions of your brand or a competitor. |
| "Excluded Names" | Names or phrases that shouldn't count as mentions, such as another company with a similar name. |
| "Case Sensitive Matching" | A setting that requires uppercase and lowercase letters to match when Klarvu recognizes a name. |
| "Tracked brand" | A competitor that is also set up and tracked as a separate brand in Klarvu. |
| Gap / "Gaps by prompt" | Questions where AI mentions one or more of your competitors without mentioning your own brand. |
Suggestions on Home
| Term | Explanation |
|---|
| "Prompt to win" | The question where competitors are most frequently mentioned without your brand appearing. |
| "Page to target" | A page cited by AI that belongs to a competitor or mentions a competitor without mentioning your brand. |
| "Top recommendation" | The highest-priority suggestion from "Recommendations", highlighted on "Home". |
| "What changed" | An overview of up to five relevant changes in your AI visibility, labeled "Up", "Watch", or "Note". |
Improvements and traffic
| Term | Explanation |
|---|
| "Recommendations" | Klarvu's suggestions for content and technical improvements you can investigate and work on. |
| "Crawlability Checker" | Checks whether AI systems can access pages on your website. |
| "Content Checker" | Reviews the content of a specific page on your website. |
| AI crawler | An automated bot operated by an AI company that visits websites and retrieves content. |
| "Agent traffic" | Visits from AI crawlers to your website, which Klarvu can track after additional setup. |
| "AI referrals" | Visits to your website originating from AI-generated answers, requiring Google Analytics 4 to be measured in Klarvu. |
Free trial
| Term | Explanation |
|---|
| Free trial | The 7 free days starting when you click "Start tracking", including up to 50 prompts, one market, and ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. See "Free trial and subscription" for more details. |
| Prompt limit | The number of prompts you can track, where each prompt-country combination counts as one. The free trial limit is 50. |