Concept · Answer surfaces
Answer engine
Definition
A search product that returns a written answer instead of a list of links.
What it means in practice
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overviews all compose prose and attach a set of sources. The distinction that matters for measurement is that the answer text and the source list are separate signals: a brand can be named in the prose without being cited, and cited without being named. Ranking has no single position to report, because the answer is one block rather than ten results.
How refd treats it
This is category vocabulary, not a refd metric. refd measures what AI answers actually said across repeated runs, and publishes the raw answer behind every number. Where a term above carries a claim about what causes visibility, refd treats that claim as a hypothesis to test rather than a setting to configure.
This definition is editorial. It describes how the term is used across the field rather than something the software computes, so unlike the metric pages it is not generated from the product.
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