A
Accessibility tree — The structured representation of a page that assistive technology and AI agents use to identify controls: each element’s role (button, link, textbox), its accessible name, and its state. When an AI agent operates a page, this tree is often its interface — which is why an unlabelled control is effectively invisible to it. See the Agentic Browsing tab.
Agentic browsing — When an AI drives a real web browser to complete a task for a person — clicking buttons, filling in forms, moving through a flow — instead of only reading the page. BeSeenByAI’s Agentic Browsing check tests whether an agent can reach a page, perceive its controls, and operate the actions on it, returning a readiness verdict (never a score). See the Agentic Browsing tab.
AI browser — A browser, or browser mode, driven by an AI agent that can act on pages rather than only read them. Examples in 2026 include ChatGPT Operator, Claude computer use, Perplexity Comet, and Microsoft Edge’s Copilot Mode. Distinct from an AI crawler, which only fetches and reads HTML.
AI Overviews — Google’s feature that generates a summarized answer at the top of search results using content from indexed pages. Requires pages to be crawlable by Googlebot and Google-Extended.
Answer Readiness — The user-facing score for how completely a page answers the questions AI systems ask about its topic. It is produced by the Content Coverage analysis (see below). Where Content Visibility asks whether AI can read a page, Answer Readiness asks whether the page can answer the question. It appears as a fifth score bar in the report Overview once the page’s content has been analysed.
Authority — In BeSeenByAI reports, the authority score reflects how clearly a page signals what it is, who created it, and whether it can be trusted. Measured through structured data, JSON-LD, page type classification, and entity signals.
B
Bot — An automated program that fetches web pages. In the context of BeSeenByAI, “bot” refers to AI crawlers and search agents. See AI bots reference for the full list.
Bot Fight Mode — A Cloudflare feature (enabled by default on all plans) that classifies automated traffic and can challenge or block AI crawlers before they reach your server.
C
Citation Readiness — The framing the report Overview uses to order fixes as the path a page follows to become citable by AI: Findable (Crawlability), Readable (Content Visibility), Trustworthy (Authority), Complete (Content Coverage / Answer Readiness), and Relevant (Prompt Fit and Prompt Discovery). Each step shows a status so you can see where a page drops out of the path.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — A measure of how much visible page content moves unexpectedly during loading. One of Google’s Core Web Vitals. In BeSeenByAI, a high CLS indicates layout instability that can interfere with content extraction by crawlers.
Computer use — Anthropic’s capability that lets Claude control a computer or browser — moving the cursor, clicking, typing — to complete a task. One of the AI-agent types BeSeenByAI’s Agentic Browsing check accounts for. See AI browser.
Content Coverage — The per-page analysis that works out the single topic a page explains and measures how completely it covers that topic — the questions it answers, the concepts it integrates, and the gaps to close first. It produces the page’s Answer Readiness score. A completeness and citation-readiness signal, not a live AI-search ranking.
Content visibility — In BeSeenByAI reports, the comparison between what a browser renders and what a bot can read. A gap between the two indicates content that exists in the browser but is inaccessible to AI crawlers.
Coverage snapshot — The percentage of rendered page content that is visible to bots. A high coverage percentage means most of what a browser sees, a bot can also read.
CrUX (Chrome UX Report) — Google’s dataset of real-world performance metrics aggregated from Chrome users. BeSeenByAI uses CrUX as the primary source for TTFB, CLS, and INP field data. Requires a minimum number of real Chrome visits to be available.
Crawlability — Whether AI bots can access a page. Involves two layers: the policy layer (robots.txt and noindex) and the runtime layer (what your infrastructure actually returns when a bot sends a request).
F
Field data — Performance metrics measured from real users visiting your page, sourced from CrUX. Reflects real-world conditions. Contrast with lab data.
I
INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — A measure of how quickly a page responds to user input. Replaced First Input Delay (FID) as a Core Web Vital in 2024. Most relevant for AI agents that interact with pages; less relevant for read-only crawlers.
Indexability — Whether a page is eligible to be indexed. A page can be crawlable but not indexable if it has a noindex directive in its meta tags or HTTP headers.
J
JSON-LD — A format for embedding structured data in a page’s HTML, typically inside <script type="application/ld+json"> tags. Tells AI systems what type of content the page contains, who created it, and what it is about. The preferred format for structured data.
L
Lab data — A performance measurement taken at audit time from a controlled environment. Always available, but reflects a single moment and network path. Used when CrUX field data is not available.
llms.txt — A proposed standard file (placed at /llms.txt) that gives AI systems a structured summary of a site’s content and links to key pages. Analogous to sitemap.xml but designed for LLM consumption.
M
Mismatch — A crawlability finding where robots.txt allows a bot but the live HTTP check shows the bot being rejected. Almost always indicates an accidental block at the infrastructure layer (CDN, WAF, hosting provider). See Crawlability tab guide.
Monitoring — BeSeenByAI’s feature that re-audits tracked URLs on a schedule and sends alerts when something meaningfully changes.
N
noindex — A directive in a page’s <meta> tag (<meta name="robots" content="noindex">) or X-Robots-Tag HTTP header that tells crawlers not to index the page. Some AI systems respect this directive.
O
Origin-level data — Performance metrics averaged across all pages on a domain, as opposed to page-specific data. Used by CrUX when page-level data is unavailable due to insufficient traffic.
P
Pagefind — The static search library used to power search in this Help Center. Indexes page content at build time; no server required.
Prompt Fit — A BeSeenByAI feature that tests whether a page’s content fits within different AI token budgets and would survive chunking by an LLM. Scores as Snippet, Summary, or In-depth.
R
Render pattern — How a page’s content is delivered: server-rendered (content in the initial HTML), client-rendered (content added by JavaScript after load), or mixed. Affects how much of the page bots without JavaScript execution can read.
Prompt Discovery — A BeSeenByAI feature that works backwards from a page’s content to identify what questions the page would answer well. Shows which AI queries are most likely to surface the page.
robots.txt — A plain-text file at the root of a domain (/robots.txt) that tells crawlers which pages they are allowed to access. Most AI bots respect it, but it is advisory — not a technical barrier.
S
Site Dimensions — On the account dashboard, the card that breaks a site’s health into its component scores — AI Crawlability, Content Visibility, Authority, and Answer Readiness — averaged across the site’s audited pages. See Your dashboard.
Site Health — The site-level rollup score on the account dashboard, summarising AI visibility across all of a project’s audited pages. The page-level equivalent is the AI Visibility Score.
Structured data — Machine-readable markup embedded in a page’s HTML that tells AI systems what type of content the page contains. Most commonly implemented as JSON-LD. Types include Article, Organization, Product, FAQ, and others.
T
TTFB (Time to First Byte) — The time between when a browser or bot sends a request and when the first byte of the server’s response arrives. The most critical performance metric for AI retrieval. See the performance grade reference for thresholds.
W
WAF (Web Application Firewall) — A security layer that filters incoming requests before they reach your application. WAF rules can block AI crawlers at the infrastructure level, bypassing robots.txt entirely.