The search & AI visibility glossary

SEO

Search Engine Optimization.

The practice of improving a website's visibility in organic (unpaid) search results by aligning its technical foundation, content and authority with what search engines reward and users need.

Technical SEO

The infrastructure layer of SEO.

Work that ensures search engines and AI crawlers can efficiently crawl, render, index and understand a site: crawlability, indexing, Core Web Vitals, structured data, site architecture, HTTPS and rendering.

On-Page SEO

Optimizing individual pages.

Optimizing the content and HTML of a page — titles, headings, body content, internal links, images, schema and entities — so it clearly matches search intent and can rank.

Off-Page SEO

Authority signals from outside your site.

Activities that build a site's authority and reputation externally, primarily earning high-quality backlinks and brand mentions through digital PR, outreach and citations.

GEO

Generative Engine Optimization.

The practice of increasing the likelihood that AI assistants and answer engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) mention, cite or recommend a brand, through entity authority, extractable content, third-party validation and AI crawler access.

AI Overview

Google's AI-generated answer box.

An AI-generated summary that appears at the top of some Google search results, synthesizing information from multiple sources and linking to them. Appearing as a cited source is a distinct visibility goal from classic ranking.

AI Search

Search mediated by AI answers.

The broad shift toward users getting answers from AI systems — Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity — rather than only from a list of links.

SERP

Search Engine Results Page.

The page a search engine returns for a query, including organic results and features like AI Overviews, featured snippets, People Also Ask, local packs, images and video.

Schema

Structured data vocabulary.

A standardized vocabulary (schema.org) added to a page as JSON-LD to help search engines and AI systems understand its content and entities, and to enable rich results.

Canonical

The preferred version of a URL.

A rel=canonical link tells search engines which URL is the master copy when duplicate or near-duplicate content exists at multiple URLs, consolidating ranking signals to one page.

Backlink

A link from another site to yours.

An inbound link from an external website. High-quality, editorially given backlinks from relevant, authoritative sites are a major ranking factor and a signal AI engines use for trust.

Anchor Text

The clickable text of a link.

The visible, clickable words in a hyperlink. A natural distribution (branded, URL, generic, partial-match) signals authenticity; over-optimized exact-match anchors can trigger penalties.

Crawl Budget

How much a site gets crawled.

The number of pages a search engine will crawl on a site within a given timeframe, determined by crawl rate and crawl demand. Wasting it on low-value URLs can delay indexing of important pages.

Indexing

Being added to the search index.

The process by which a search engine stores and organizes a page's content after crawling it, making it eligible to appear in search results.

Google Business Profile

Formerly Google My Business.

The free business listing that powers Google's local pack and knowledge panel. Renamed from Google My Business (GMB) in 2022. Central to local SEO.

NAP

Name, Address, Phone.

A business's core contact details. Consistency of NAP across the web (listings, directories, the site) is a local ranking and trust signal.

Citation

An online mention of a business.

In local SEO, a mention of a business's NAP on another website (directories, data aggregators). In AI search, a source referenced in an AI-generated answer.

Core Web Vitals

Google's UX performance metrics.

A set of field metrics — Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — that measure loading, interactivity and visual stability, and factor into ranking.

E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust.

A framework from Google's quality rater guidelines describing signals of content quality. Especially important for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics like health, finance and law.

Entity SEO

Optimizing around things, not strings.

Structuring content and signals around well-defined entities (people, places, organizations, concepts) and their relationships, so search engines and AI systems understand meaning rather than just matching keywords.

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