Local Search & SEO Glossary

When a website is created, a structure is put into place which helps the end user find what they are looking for. For example, your homepage will likely have links to subpages that cover particular topics. This is especially important to search engine crawlers as they have an easier time with well-structured web pages. Ensure that your homepage is the landing page that has links to your most important subpages. Your sitemap.xml and robots.txt will help a crawler better understand your page, so don't forget to make sure those are well laid out.

The X-Robots-Tag allows you to control how individual pages are indexed in Google. Using the HTTP header you can define these settings, as needed when you create individual pages in HTML.

eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language. A language which reformulates HTML 4.0 in XML syntax.

Bare-bones computer code that is very easy for search engines to read. XML is similar to HTML but is not really intended to be read by humans. Sitemaps are usually uploaded to Google Webmaster Tools and are in XML format.

An XML sitemap is the list of pages and resources in an .xml file that you submit to Google.

Stands for "Your Money or Your Life" and is a term used by Google to categorize certain types of web content. These are pages that, if inaccurate, could significantly impact a person's happiness, health, financial stability, or safety. Google holds YMYL sites to a higher standard because of the potential for harm from misinformation.

An Internet Yellow Pages website to which local business listings can be added.

The local business listing center of Yahoo.com. As of 2020, it is being managed through a Yext.com partnership.

Yandex is a technology and Internet services company in Russia. It is the most popular website and search engine in Russia, with traffic close to or surpassing Google.Yandex started as a Russian search program for MS-DOS called Arkadia, written by Arkady Volozh and Arkady Borkovsky. In 1997, they launched the search engine Yandex.ru and today offer search and other services.

Founded in 2004, Yelp has become a dominant player in the world of local business reviews. Most local business owners will wish to create a Yelp profile. Yelp has earned both considerable popularity and a measure of criticism for marketing practices which have resulted in legal settlements.

Founded in 2005, Yodle offers a paid lead generation and advertising service to local businesses.

A video sharing platform owned by Google and cited as the second largest search engine in the world. Local business owners may invest in the development of video content which can be published via YouTube as a social media tactic and form of advertising.

A business rating service purchased by Google in 2011. Zagat ratings on a 30-point scale are currently displayed as a component of local listing data in Google's search results. In March of 2018, Google sold Zagat to Infatuation, the restaurant recommendation website, for an undisclosed amount.

This refers to search engine queries where users find the information they need directly on the search engine results page (SERP) without clicking through to a website. Search engines like Google now provide AI-generated answers to many queries within the search results, eliminating the need to click on any links.

The capability of an AI model to correctly perform tasks it has never explicitly been trained on. This is particularly relevant to models like GPT, which can generate responses to prompts they have never seen before based solely on patterns learned during their initial pre-training.

Zomato, an Indian restaurant search and discovery service founded in 2008, was a major source of international reviews. As of November 2021, Zomato ceased most international operations, including in the US, UK, Singapore, and Lebanon, focusing on three segments: India, UAE, and Rest of the World.

Headless BI is an architectural model that separates the back-end (modeling and semantic layers) from the front-end (visualization layer), lacking a presentation layer. This setup allows the back-end to be accessed by various front-ends through an API, ensuring consistent and reliable data across different business applications