retrieval
The step in which an answer engine selects documents to compose from.
What retrieval means
Everything a site controls acts here, which is why machine-readable clarity outperforms persuasion.
Where retrieval comes up on this site
- AI visibility tools compared: what each one actually measuresThe OpenAI API is not ChatGPT — the app performs retrieval, calls tools, and carries personalisation and memory the raw API does not reproduce.
- How to rank in ChatGPT: the part that is actually in your controlNobody outside the model provider can see the ordering, and the provider cannot reliably describe it either — a model asked how it ranks has no introspective access to its own retrieval.
- GEO, AEO, LLM SEO and the agentic web: what the terms mean and which parts can be measuredGrounded retrieval and generation from weights are different systems and averaging them produces a number about neither.
- How to measure AI and agent visibility without trusting a vendor's scoreMeasurement 1: can the retrieval layer read you Free, reproducible, and the only one where the answer is unambiguous.
- How to block AI crawlers and agents, and what each block costs youBlocking retrieval takes effect immediately and reverses immediately.
Terms this definition uses
Definitions that name retrieval
answer engine · training data · Hybrid search · Re-ranking · ASN blocking · agentic knowledge graph · BM25 · cross-encoder · Google-Extended · GPTBot vs OAI-SearchBot · information gain · dense retrieval · Model drift · Corpus · Document ingestion · Chunk overlap
Related terms in Answer engines and retrieval
How a generated answer gets made, and what your page is competing for inside it.
AEO · GEO · AI visibility score · share of voice · prompt set · brand mention · RAG · grounding · training data · embedding · chunking · context window · token · hallucination · refusal · AI Overview · answer engine · citation · hallucinated attribution · Hybrid search · Re-ranking · Passage ranking · Query fan-out · Chunk boundary · BM25 · cross-encoder · AI Mode · information gain · dense retrieval
Questions about retrieval
What is retrieval?
The step in which an answer engine selects documents to compose from.
Which area of the glossary does retrieval belong to?
Answer engines and retrieval: How a generated answer gets made, and what your page is competing for inside it.
← citation · hallucinated attribution →
See it in the full glossary · 731 terms across 19 areas.