Glossary

43 terms from AI, SEO and paid search, defined in one sentence and then explained properly — with an example, why it matters, and the common mistakes.

AI

AI Overviews

AI Overviews are Google's generated summaries shown above traditional results for some queries, with links to supporting sources.

AI Search

AI search is any search experience where a generative model answers the query directly instead of only listing links.

AI SEO

AI SEO means adapting search work to a results page where AI answers appear, and using AI responsibly in the work itself.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is software that performs tasks normally requiring human judgement, such as recognising language, images or patterns.

Generative AI

Generative AI is a model that produces new content — text, images, code or audio — rather than only classifying existing data.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

GEO is optimising content so generative answer engines can retrieve, understand, quote and attribute it correctly.

Large Language Model (LLM)

A large language model is a generative model trained on very large amounts of text to predict and produce language.

Prompt Engineering

Prompt engineering is the practice of writing instructions that get reliable, useful output from a generative model.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

RAG is the pattern of retrieving relevant documents first and then having a language model answer using them.

SEO

Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites to yours, used by search engines as one signal of a page's significance.

Broken Link

A broken link points at a URL that returns an error, most often 404 (not found) or a server error.

Canonical URL

A canonical URL is the version of a page you declare as the original when the same content is reachable at several addresses.

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are Google's metrics for loading performance, interaction responsiveness and visual stability.

E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness — the qualities Google's raters use to judge content quality.

Indexability

Indexability is whether a page is eligible to be stored in a search engine's index and shown in results.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is the network of links between your own pages, which helps discovery, distributes importance and explains topics.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of finding the searches your audience makes and deciding which ones a page should target.

Meta Description

The meta description is a short summary of a page that search engines often show beneath the title in results.

Meta Title

The meta title (title tag) is the page's title in the browser tab and, usually, the clickable headline in search results.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO covers signals from outside your site, above all links and mentions from other credible sources.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is the work done inside a page: title, meta description, headings, copy, images and internal links.

Robots.txt

Robots.txt is a file at the root of a domain that tells crawlers which paths they may request.

Schema Markup

Schema markup is structured data added to a page in a machine-readable format that describes what the page contains.

Search Intent

Search intent is what a person actually wants when they type a query: to learn, to compare, to find a specific site, or to buy.

SEO

SEO (search engine optimisation) is the work of making a site crawlable, understandable and useful enough to appear in unpaid search results.

SERP

A SERP (search engine results page) is what a search engine returns for a query, including ads, AI answers and result features.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO covers everything that determines whether search engines can reach, render, index and trust your pages.

Thin Content

Thin content is a page with too little substance to satisfy the query it targets.

XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap is a file listing the URLs you want search engines to know about, used as a discovery source.