Glossary · Fundamentals
Grounding (AI)
Anchoring an AI model's response in specific, retrieved sources rather than relying only on what it learned during training.
How it works
Engines like Perplexity and Google AI Overviews retrieve relevant pages at the moment a question is asked, then generate an answer grounded in that retrieved content — which is part of why these engines can reflect very recent information and often cite sources directly.
Why it matters for visibility
Content that's easy to retrieve and clearly relevant to a specific question is more likely to ground — and therefore shape — an answer, compared to content that's vague, hard to find, or buried under unrelated material.
See more terms in the full glossary, or read the AI Visibility 101 guide for the full picture.