Glossary — every term, defined.
Signal, verdict, gap, share-of-voice, citability, fingerprint, credit. One line each, alphabetical, with a link to the page that goes deeper.
Every term ScoutRival uses that isn't obvious on sight, defined in a sentence or two, with a link to the page that explains it properly.
A – B
AEO
Answer Engine Optimisation — the work of getting your business named and quoted by AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, rather than only ranked by Google. See getting cited by AI assistants.
Archetype
The behavioural pattern ScoutRival maps your business onto when you pick your industry — a local service business behaves differently from a software company, and the engine treats them differently. Set on your brand profile.
Brand Engine
ScoutRival's understanding of your market: the search demand around your services, what your rivals are competing on, and where the openings are. It's what your brief and your content are grounded in. Rebuild it when your services change — it's free. See the Brand Engine.
BYOK
Bring Your Own Key — connecting your own AI provider account so generation runs on your provider at their prices, using a model you choose. See bring your own AI key.
C – D
Citability
How easy your content is for an AI assistant to lift and quote — clear answers near the top, real structure, facts it can attribute. High citability is what gets you named in an AI answer. See getting cited by AI assistants.
Content Score
BlogCraft's rubric for a finished article, scored against eight weighted criteria — structure, answerability, entities, evidence and so on. It measures how likely the article is to be quoted, not just how long it is. See the Content Score.
Credit
The unit ScoutRival meters AI work in. A social post, an article, an audit — each costs a fixed number of credits from your monthly allowance. Full price list on the credits page; how the allowance works in how credits work.
Differentiation
The flip side of a topic gap: ground your competitors have already saturated, where writing another near-identical piece won't move you. ScoutRival flags it so you spend your effort where there's air. See topic gaps & differentiation.
G – N
Gap
A keyword your competitors are winning and you aren't. Gaps come in three buckets:
- Missing — they rank, you don't appear at all.
- Untapped — nobody in your market has really claimed it, including them.
- Improve — you already rank, but behind them, and it's within reach.
See competitive gaps.
Impact score
How much a competitor's move actually matters — a new pricing page scores higher than a stock-photo Instagram post. It's why your brief leads with two signals instead of forty. See competitor signals.
Next Move
The single action ScoutRival recommends today, written to be done rather than admired. It sits directly under the Verdict in your brief and it is deliberately one thing. See the Verdict & Next Move.
O – S
Opportunity score
How worthwhile a gap is to chase, weighing search demand against how hard it looks to win. It's what sorts your gaps so the top one is the one to take. See competitive gaps.
Quarantine
What happens to a competitor source that keeps failing — a dead link, a renamed handle, a page that's gone. Rather than retrying it forever, ScoutRival steps back the checks and eventually parks it, and tells you. See what we monitor, and how often.
Share-of-Voice
Of all the businesses an AI assistant names when asked about your category, how often it names you. We ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity and count. See AI Share-of-Voice.
Signal
One observed thing a competitor did — a new blog post, a price change, a hiring push, a campaign. Signals are the raw material your Daily Brief is built from. See competitor signals.
T – V
Topic gap
A whole theme your competitors cover and you don't — broader than a single keyword. It's the difference between missing a phrase and missing a subject. See topic gaps & differentiation.
Verdict
The one-line read on where you stand today, written from that morning's signals. It's the first thing in your brief and it's short on purpose — if it needed a paragraph it wouldn't be a verdict. See the Verdict & Next Move.
Voice fingerprint
What ScoutRival has learned about how you write — sentence length, formality, the words you reach for and the ones you never use — extracted from writing samples you supply. It's what stops your posts sounding like everyone else's. See Brand Voice.
Search the docs from the box at the top of any page, or ask us and we'll add it here.