Glossary
Senior living marketing and AI visibility glossary.
Plain definitions for the care, marketing, and AI terms operators run into.
Short answer
This glossary defines common senior living terms such as RCFE, ARF, assisted living, memory care, census, and lease-up, marketing terms such as cost per move-in and speed to lead, and AI visibility terms such as GEO, AEO, llms.txt, schema.org, mention rate, and share of answer.
- Activities of daily living (ADLs)
- Basic self-care tasks such as bathing, dressing, eating, toileting, transferring, and continence. The level of help a person needs with ADLs often determines the right care setting.
- A2P 10DLC
- Application-to-person messaging over standard 10-digit long code phone numbers. US carriers require businesses to register brands and campaigns before sending marketing or notification texts.
- Adult Residential Facility (ARF)
- A California license for non-medical residential care for adults aged 18 to 59 who need care and supervision.
- AI Overviews
- AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of some Google search results and cite web sources.
- AI visibility
- How often and how accurately AI assistants mention and cite a business when people ask relevant questions. Also called generative engine optimization (GEO) or answer engine optimization (AEO).
- Answer engine optimization (AEO)
- Structuring content so search features and AI assistants can extract a direct answer from it.
- Assisted living
- Residential senior living that provides housing, meals, and help with activities of daily living, without the round-the-clock medical care of a skilled nursing facility.
- Board and care home
- A small residential care home, often a converted house with six or fewer residents, that provides meals, supervision, and help with daily activities.
- Census
- The number of residents currently living in a community. Occupancy is census divided by capacity.
- Citation rate
- In AI visibility measurement, the share of test questions where an AI assistant links to or cites a given website or profile.
- Continuing care retirement community (CCRC)
- See life plan community.
- Cost per move-in
- Total marketing cost for a period divided by the number of move-ins attributed to it. The most meaningful efficiency metric in senior living marketing.
- Entity
- A distinct, identifiable thing, such as a company or a community, that search engines and AI models track with a set of facts.
- Generative engine optimization (GEO)
- The practice of improving how a brand appears in AI-generated answers from assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude.
- Google Business Profile
- Google's free business listing that appears in Maps and local search results, including hours, photos, reviews, and contact details.
- Inquiry
- A first contact from a prospect or family member, such as a call, form, or chat, asking about a community.
- JSON-LD
- A format for adding schema.org structured data to a web page in a script block that machines can read.
- Lead scoring
- Assigning points to leads based on fit and behavior so sales teams contact the most likely movers first.
- Lease-up
- The period after a new community opens, or before it opens, when marketing and sales work to reach stabilized occupancy.
- Life plan community
- A campus offering independent living plus access to assisted living, memory care, and skilled nursing, usually under a residency contract. Also called a CCRC.
- llms.txt
- A proposed standard: a plain-text Markdown file at a website's root that summarizes the site for large language models and links to key pages.
- Local pack
- The map and list of three local businesses that Google shows for many location-based searches. Also called the map pack.
- Memory care
- Specialized residential care for people living with Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia, usually in a secured setting with trained staff.
- Mention rate
- In AI visibility measurement, the share of test questions where an AI assistant names a given business.
- Move-in
- A new resident moving into a community. The outcome senior living marketing is ultimately measured by.
- Occupancy
- The percentage of a community's units or beds that are filled.
- Placement agent
- A professional or referral service that helps families find senior living, usually paid a referral fee by the community.
- Prompt panel
- A fixed set of realistic questions run against AI assistants on a schedule to measure AI visibility over time.
- Residential Care Facility for the Elderly (RCFE)
- California's license for non-medical residential care for people 60 and older, from six-bed homes to large assisted living and memory care communities.
- Respite care
- A short-term stay in a senior living community, often used while a family caregiver rests or travels, or after a hospital stay.
- Schema.org
- A shared vocabulary for structured data that search engines and AI systems use to understand web pages.
- A business's share of mentions or citations in AI answers compared with its competitors for the same set of questions.
- Special ad category (housing)
- A Meta advertising designation required for many housing-related ads, which limits targeting by age, gender, and ZIP code to support fair housing.
- Speed to lead
- The time between an inquiry and the first meaningful response from the community.
- TCPA
- The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a US law governing marketing calls and text messages, including consent requirements.
- Tour
- An in-person or virtual visit to a community by a prospect or family. A key step between inquiry and move-in.
- WCAG
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the standard for making websites usable by people with disabilities, including many older adults.
Start a conversation
Ready to fill rooms with a system that works together?
Tell us about your community, your current website, and how inquiries reach your team. We will map the system, including how you show up in AI answers today. Month to month, no long-term contract.