Glossary & Positioning

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This is your source of truth for how Semrush names things, frames the AI Search category, and positions our expertise. Use it when producing AI-focused content. When in doubt, refer here before defaulting to industry jargon.

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Background

A decade of acceleration has led us here: from RankBrain in 2015 to BERT in 2019 to ChatGPT in 2023 to AI Overviews in 2024 to Gemini-powered AI Mode in 2025. The direction has always been the same — from AI ranking results for humans to AI evaluating, synthesizing, and acting on their behalf.

Here's what that means for how we talk about search:

• AI Search is the category. It covers the full spectrum of how AI-powered systems shape how people and machines find, compare, and decide.
• Agentic is already here. Every AI-generated answer involves a machine retrieving sources, judging credibility, and composing a response. That's agentic behavior. The complexity is what's scaling.
• SEO isn't going away. The same inputs that built organic visibility — authority, structure, relevance — are now the inputs AI systems use to retrieve, cite, and recommend. Semrush isn't pivoting. We're extending.
• The north star is Brand Visibility. Winning means being found, understood, and trusted across every discovery surface — whether the one finding you is a person or an AI agent acting on their behalf.

1. The core framework

AI Search

The discovery ecosystem where AI-powered systems shape how people and machines find, compare, and decide.

AI's role in search operates on a spectrum defined by one question: How much evaluating does the machine do before handing it back to the human?

• AI-assisted search: AI systems rank and surface results, but humans evaluate, click, and convert. This is traditional search today. The human remains the decision-maker. AI is a tool, not an intermediary.
• Agentic Search: AI that retrieves, evaluates, and acts on information on behalf of users. Agentic search is a spectrum spanning simple and complex actions.
• Simple agentic (already here): A ChatGPT response, an AI Overview, a Perplexity answer. The machine selects sources, judges credibility, and composes a response. This is where most AI Search activity happens today.
• Complex agentic (rapidly emerging): Autonomous agents that browse, compare, negotiate, and transact across multiple sources with little or no human intervention

SEO + ASO: The unified discipline

SEO remains the foundation. Agentic search optimization (ASO) extends it to cover everything that shapes how AI systems perceive, evaluate, and act on your brand. Together, they form one discipline across four layers: