SEO, GEO and AEO glossary
Short definitions of the terms you meet in SEO and AI search, in plain words.
What are backlinks?
A backlink is a link from another site to yours. Why Google still uses links, which links count, and what nofollow, sponsored and ugc mean.
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What are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals are Google's three page experience metrics: LCP for loading, INP for responsiveness and CLS for visual stability, with their thresholds.
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What are Google AI Overviews?
AI Overviews are the AI-written summaries Google shows above some search results, with links to the pages they drew on. How they work and how to appear.
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What are impressions in Search Console?
An impression is counted each time a link to your site appears in a Google result someone sees. How Search Console counts impressions, with examples.
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What are striking distance keywords?
Striking distance keywords are queries a page already ranks for just outside the top spots, often positions 4 to 20, where a small fix can add clicks.
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What is a canonical tag?
A canonical tag tells search engines which URL is the main version of a page when several URLs show the same or very similar content.
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What is a zero-click search?
A zero-click search ends without a click to any website, because the answer is on the results page itself. What it means for your traffic.
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What is AEO (answer engine optimization)?
AEO is the work of making your page the answer search and AI engines show: featured snippets, People Also Ask, AI Overviews and chat answers.
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What is AI share of voice?
AI share of voice is your brand's share of the mentions or citations in AI answers for a set of prompts, compared with your competitors.
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What is an AI citation?
An AI citation is a link to a source page shown in an AI answer, such as ChatGPT search, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews. How citations are chosen.
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What is an XML sitemap?
An XML sitemap lists the URLs you want search engines to crawl, with optional last-changed dates. Limits, what Google ignores and how to submit one.
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What is average position in Search Console?
Average position is the mean of your highest-ranking result's position across searches. How Google calculates it, and why it can mislead.
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What is crawl budget?
Crawl budget is how many URLs Google can and wants to crawl on your site in a given time. Why most sites never need to worry about it.
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What is CTR (click-through rate) in SEO?
CTR is the share of people who click your result after seeing it: clicks divided by impressions. How Search Console counts it and what moves it.
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What is Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)?
CLS measures how much a page's content jumps around while it loads. Good is 0.1 or less. What causes layout shifts and how to stop them.
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What is E-E-A-T?
E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust: the qualities Google's rater guidelines use to judge content. What it means.
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What is entity SEO?
Entity SEO helps search engines and AI understand the real-world things your site is about (your business, people, products) and how they connect.
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What is GEO (generative engine optimization)?
GEO means making your site easy for generative AI like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini to find, trust and cite when it writes an answer.
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What is Google AI Mode?
AI Mode is Google Search's chat-style tab: it answers with an AI response built from many searches at once and links to sources. What it means for sites.
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What is helpful content in Google Search?
Helpful content is Google's term for content made for people, not for rankings. What its guidance asks, and how the old system became part of core ranking.
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What is hreflang?
Hreflang tells Google which language or regional version of a page to show each searcher. The syntax, x-default, and the mistakes that break it.
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What is IndexNow?
IndexNow is a protocol that lets a site tell Bing, Yandex and other engines the moment a URL is added, changed or deleted. Google does not use it.
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What is Interaction to Next Paint (INP)?
INP measures how quickly a page responds to clicks, taps and key presses. Good is 200 ms or less. It replaced FID as a Core Web Vital in 2024.
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What is internal linking?
Internal links connect pages on the same site. They help people and Google find pages, understand them and see which ones matter most.
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What is JSON-LD?
JSON-LD is the structured data format Google recommends: a script block of labeled facts about the page, kept separate from the visible HTML.
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What is keyword cannibalization?
Keyword cannibalization is when several pages on one site compete for the same query, so none ranks as well as one strong page could. How to fix it.
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What is Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)?
LCP measures when the largest image or text block in view finishes rendering. Good is 2.5 seconds or less. Common causes of slow LCP and fixes.
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What is LLM visibility?
LLM visibility is how often AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude mention, recommend or cite your brand when people ask questions in your market.
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What is llms.txt?
llms.txt is a proposed Markdown file at your site's root that points AI tools to your most useful pages. What it does, who reads it, and a sample.
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What is noindex?
Noindex is a rule, in a meta tag or HTTP header, that tells search engines not to show a page in results. How it works and the mistakes to avoid.
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What is query fan-out?
Query fan-out is how Google's AI Mode and AI Overviews split one question into many related searches, then combine the results into one answer.
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What is robots.txt?
Robots.txt is a text file at your site's root that tells crawlers which URLs they may fetch. What it can and cannot do, with examples.
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What is search intent?
Search intent is what a person wants when they type a query: to learn, to find a site, to compare or to buy. Why matching it decides rankings.
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What is structured data?
Structured data is code that labels what a page is about (a product, a recipe, a business) in a standard format search engines can read.
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