Every term you'll meet in modern search, explained in one line. Bookmark it.
Answer Engine Optimization — optimizing content for direct-answer surfaces such as featured snippets, People Also Ask, and voice assistants.
Google's generative summary that appears above the traditional 10 blue links, synthesized from multiple sources.
The share of AI-engine answers that mention or link to your brand across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.
The clickable text of a hyperlink. Google uses it to understand the topic of the linked page.
A hyperlink from one website to another. Historically the strongest ranking signal in Google's algorithm.
The percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one page. In GA4, replaced by 'engagement rate'.
An HTML tag (rel="canonical") that tells search engines which version of a duplicate page is the master copy.
Any online mention of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP), whether or not it links to your site.
Cumulative Layout Shift — a measure of how much visible content moves unexpectedly during page load.
A topic your competitors rank for but you don't. Filling gaps is a fast path to traffic.
Google's user-experience metrics: LCP (loading), INP (interactivity), and CLS (visual stability).
The number of URLs a search engine bot will crawl on your site in a given period.
Click-Through Rate — clicks divided by impressions. A key indicator of SERP-title effectiveness.
Domain Authority — Moz's 0–100 score predicting how likely a domain is to rank.
A Google Search Console file that tells Google to ignore specific backlinks pointing to your site.
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness — Google's quality guideline framework.
A person, place, thing, or concept that search and AI engines understand as a distinct node in their knowledge graph.
A boxed answer at the top of Google's results, extracted from a ranking page.
Google Business Profile — the free business listing that powers Google Maps and the local pack.
Generative Engine Optimization — structuring content so generative AI engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) cite it.
Google Search Console — Google's free tool for monitoring your site's presence in search results.
An HTML attribute that tells search engines which language and region a page targets.
Every time a page URL appears in search results, counted once per search.
Interaction to Next Paint — measures the latency of the slowest interaction a user makes on a page.
The purpose behind a search query: informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional.
A hyperlink from one page on your site to another. Helps distribute PageRank and define site architecture.
A 0–100 estimate of how hard it is to rank on page 1 for a given keyword.
Largest Contentful Paint — how long it takes for the biggest above-the-fold element to render.
A specific, lower-volume search query (3+ words) that typically converts better than head terms.
The HTML tag that provides a summary of a page — often used by Google as the SERP snippet.
Name, Address, Phone — the three data points that must be consistent across all local citations.
A link attribute that tells search engines not to pass PageRank through the link.
Page Authority — Moz's 0–100 score predicting how likely a specific page is to rank.
Google's original link-analysis algorithm. Every link is a weighted vote.
A SERP block of related questions that expand to reveal snippet answers.
Automated daily checks of how AI engines describe your brand, category, or competitors.
A search result enhanced with visual elements (stars, images, prices) via structured data.
A file at the root of your site that tells crawlers which URLs they can and cannot access.
Structured data (JSON-LD) that helps search engines understand page content.
Search Engine Results Page — the page Google returns for a query.
An XML file listing your site's URLs to help search engines discover and crawl them.
Moz's 0–17 score estimating how spammy a domain looks based on 27 signals.
A pillar page linked to a set of related supporting pages — an architecture that both Google and LLMs reward.
The human-readable part of a URL after the domain — e.g. /blog/aeo-vs-seo.
A search that ends without a click, because the SERP itself answered the query.