Glossary
Engine Family
The split between chat engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude) and Search-AI surfaces (Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Bing Copilot). Never blended into one score.
Definition
Engine family is the split between two mechanically different kinds of AI surface: chat engines, where a direct question gets a conversational answer, and Search-AI surfaces, where an AI-written summary is embedded inside a familiar search-results page.
The two families behave differently enough, in sampling variance, in how they select sources, and in what a user actually sees, that reporting them as one blended number would hide which one actually matters for a given buyer journey. Every score on this site is labeled by the family, and the specific engine, that produced it.
Same ruler
See how this is measured
This term is part of the same declared methodology every score on this site follows: which prompts, which engines, how many runs.
Related terms
AI Overviews
Google's AI-generated summary that appears above the traditional search results for many queries, synthesizing an answer from several already-ranking pages and citing a handful of them directly.
Grounding
Whether an AI answer draws on live web retrieval (a grounded, or retrieval-augmented, answer) versus fixed training-time knowledge. Changes what optimization work can influence, and how fast.
Related reading
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