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 measuresThe difference that decides whether a tool can help you is which half of the problem it can see: whether you are named in the answer (demand side), or whether the retrieval layer can fetch and read your site at all (supply side).
- How to rank in ChatGPT: the part that is in your controlThe prompts buyers type, the model's training data and update schedule, which documents retrieval picks, and whether the answer names a source.
- Do AI crawlers render JavaScript? Check what they seeWe wrote four tiny test pages, each carrying the same harmless code, DEMO-731, in a different place, and ran two checks on each: a raw string search of the file, and a text extractor that reads the first response and skips script and style, the way many…
- How to measure AI visibility yourself: three checksStep 1: can the retrieval layer read your site?
- NAP consistency: how to check your name, address and phoneTwo names on one number look like two businesses to a retrieval system, and the older name usually has more corroboration.
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 · 772 terms across 19 areas.
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