Local Search & SEO Glossary

ChatGPT is a language model, a form of artificial intelligence that uses a data source to answer questions and respond to prompts. It's particularly interesting in local SEO as it can be used to scale up the creation of content in bulk and complete simple tasks in a cost-effective way. However, experts recommend you always check and edit the content it creates rather than using it blindly.

What is a canonical tag? A canonical tag (aka "rel canonical") is a way of telling search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. Using the canonical tag prevents problems caused by identical or "duplicate" content appearing on multiple URLs. Practically speaking, the canonical tag tells search engines which version of a URL you want to appear in search results. Why does canonicalization matter? Duplicate content is a complicated subject, but when search engines crawl many URLs with identical (or very similar) content, it can cause a number of SEO problems. First, if search crawlers have to wade through too much duplicate content, they may miss some of your unique content. Second, large-scale duplication may dilute your ranking ability. Finally, even if your content does rank, search engines may pick the wrong URL as the "original." Using canonicalization helps you control your duplicate content.

The number of people who click the call button on your client�s business profile. Note: This metric requires your business phone number for Insights to track calls. As of 2023, there are no changes that have been publically announced by Google.

A reference to a business's name, address, phone number, and other core data online. Structured citations appear in formal listings like Internet Yellow Pages or directories. Unstructured citations are more informal, occurring as mentions on blogs, news sites, or social media. They can be partial and often arise organically from others discussing the business.

A call to action, or CTA, tells your audience what to do next. This may be as simple as a contextual phrase ("Contact us today!") or a graphic site element (a button, for example, labeled, "Click Here to Order").

A digital announcement of a customer's presence at a specific physical location, often a business. Check-ins are the key component of many location-based services including Foursquare, Facebook, and Yelp. Check-ins can be used as a vehicle for both tracking customers and rewarding them with special offers.

One of a set of approximately 4,000 default business types with which the local search engines try to associate each business in their index. Although each search engine and data aggregator has its own taxonomy, many categories are based on the North American Industry Classification System, or NAICS. The current Google Places for Business dashboard allows business owners to choose up to five categories, all of which must stem from Google's pre-chosen category choices.

A technology that temporarily stores web content, such as images, to reduce future page loading times.

An HTML code element that specifies a preferred website URL, when multiple URLs have the same or similar content, to reduce duplicate content. Also known as canonicalization.

A snapshot of a webpage as it appeared when a search engine last crawled it.

A country-code top-level domain. For instance, a company based in the United Kingdom would have a domain like this: www.example.co.uk, where uk is the ccTLD.

In mathematics, when the same data can be represented in multiple ways, it is best to standardize that representation by establishing the data's canonical form, the one primary form in which it will be used. In the computer science field, the act of defining the canonical form of data is called canonicalization.

A phone number used to measure the success of specific marketing efforts and to determine the source of leads. For local businesses, call tracking numbers are not recommended, as they can lead to multiple problems, including the clouding of clear NAP signals.

Content or headlines designed to generate the maximum number of clicks rather than focus on providing the best quality or value for users.

Most commonly refers to page on a website providing information about a specific location of a business, most typically in the multi-location business scenario. Also called "location landing pages", city landing pages can be useful in helping a local business achieve search engine visibility in multiple cities, while also offering content that has been carefully customized to a specific geographic audience. City landing pages may also be used by service area businesses, like plumbers or house painters, to showcase their work in a variety of cities where they offer services, despite lacking a physical location there. See also: landing page

The act of verifying one's business information with a local search engine and taking ownership of the business listing at that search engine. Reduces risk of hijacking by spammers or competitors. Often involves a PIN setup process with the search engine, platform, or app.

A search engine's collection of information about a particular business location from all of its data sources. In some cases, a search engine's attempt to create a cluster is too "aggressive," causing distinct business listings to merge in its index. In other cases, its attempts to create a cluster may not be strong enough, causing multiple listings to appear for the same business.

The rate at which users click on an advertisement, link, or other search engine result. CTR is one metric used for measuring the success of online campaigns. In the case of local businesses, it's hypothesized that specific types of clicks on Google Business Profile listings can positively impact rank. These would include clicks-to-call, clicks-to-website, and clicks-for-driving-directions.

Cloaking is a black hat SEO technique that tricks search engines into finding information from a website that is not what the end user will see. At one point this was a way to let search engines know what type of information was available in media containers like Adobe Flash or videos, but today, progressive enhancement is used. Unless you are up to no good, there is no reason to use this anymore.

A concept in the local search industry used to define a central point of geography or activity. The centroid concept describes users' locations during searches, with Google prioritizing businesses closest to the user's device, known as "proximity to the point of search."

Competition (keyword) is the measure of how difficult it will be to rank for a particular keyword. The competition for a keyword can vary depending on how popular the keyword is and industry competition. ... and aggregated their answers into one comprehensive guide for competitive keyword analysis.

A competitor is any website or listing you are competing against for online visibility. Results appearing before and after your business for a given query are your competitors. Online competitors may be different than offline competitors.

Clustering is the act of organizing websites into groups and categories. Not only does this make it a lot easier for search engines to look through, but it offers readers diversity in the top results.

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) uses a global network of hosting servers that you can use to load your site from locations closer to each user. This improves your loading times for worldwide visitors, which is important if you are marketing to international audiences.

Publishing identical core business details across the web. In particular, the consistency with which local business NAP information is published influences search engines' trust in the validity and accuracy of this data. The publication of consistent business information also safeguards against consumer misdirection and customer loss. See also: NAP / NAP+W (Name Address Phone + Website)

The marketing practice of auditing, cleaning up, and building citations for a local business on a variety of local business data platforms. The fundamental impacts of proper citation management have led to the development of citation management software products that reduce manual work while minimizing error. See also: citation, service area business

Click depth is the number of clicks it takes to get from the home page, or an entrance page, to a destination page on a website. The more clicks it takes, the less likely Google will crawl the page or it will rank.Pages that are the closest to the homepage are considered to be the most authoritative and the most likely to be crawled and indexed by Google.Click depth is important for pages to be crawled efficiently and for the flow of link equity; therefore does influence ranking indirectly.

How frequently two websites (or webpages) are mentioned together by a third-party website, even if those first two items don't link to (or reference) each other. This is a way search engines can establish subject similarity.

When Google makes broad updates to its core algorithm. Google sometimes announces a specific theme to their updates, such as the Page Experience update, but core updates are non-specific and happen several times a year.

The process of improving the number or quality of conversions that occur on a website. Some popular CRO tactics include testing changes to website design, copy, images, price, call-to-action, and messaging.

Poorly written comments, often off-topic and self-promotional, posted by spambots in the hopes of getting a free (but ultimately worthless) link

Words, images, videos, or sounds (or any combination thereof) that convey information that is meant to be distributed to and consumed by an audience. One of the two most important Google ranking factors (along with links). Search engines want to reward content that is useful, informative, valuable, credible, unique, and engaging with better traffic and visibility.

A complex platform of computer code that allows a website to be easily edited or managed by someone with no knowledge of computer code. Popular content management systems include WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.

This term refers to the use of fresh, engaging and professionally written text on your website, in your blog, on social media platforms and landing pages. The goal of effective content marketing is to engage your prospects with beneficial and relevant information, but also to help increase your search engine rankings.

The process of convincing a website visitor to call, email, or visit a business offline (i.e., convert to a customer).

The extent to which a relationship exists between two or more elements. Often used in SEO research to infer relationships of variables on search rankings due to the black box nature of algorithms. Always remember, however, that correlation does not equal causation.

A phrase often used by speakers at conferences and writers on popular SEO (and digital marketing) publications, emphasizes the importance of content for achieving success in these fields. It originated from a Bill Gates essay titled "Content is King," published on January 3, 1996.

The rate (expressed in a percentage) at which website users complete a desired action. This is calculated by dividing the total number of conversions by traffic, then multiplying by 100.

A set of metrics that measure the performance of the page related to user experience, introduced with the Page Experience update. They include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) for loading performance, First Input Delay (FID) for interactivity, and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) for visual stability. They are a ranking factor, though relevance may outweigh them.

A small file sent by a website and stored in a user's web browser while browsing the website. It allows websites to remember information about a user and display custom information such as advertisements when the user returns. This phrase actually dates back to a Bill Gates essay, Content is King, published January 3, 1996 (Wayback Machine).

The amount of text displayed on a page compared to the amount of code used to construct the page is called the code to text ratio. A higher ratio of text to code is considered to provide a better user experience but is not a direct ranking factor.

Crawl errors refer to a number of issues that prevent search bots or other types of crawlers from accessing or parsing web resources. Such errors can include DNS errors, server connectivity issues, code bugs or issues with key files, such as your robots.txt file. Once again, one of your most important SEO tasks is to avoid crawl errors.

The act of a search engine reading a page. See also: spider, algorithm

The total number of URLs search engines can and want to crawl on a website during a specific time period.

A crawler is a program used by search engines to collect and index website data. It captures content and links, visiting them later to move between sites. Popular crawlers include GoogleBot, Bingbot, Slurp Bot, DuckDuckBot, Baiduspider, Yandex Bot, Sogou Spider, Exabot, Facebook External Hit, and Alexa Crawler.

When a bot discovers your site, a new page or any updated pages, its job is to crawl them. First, it needs to read the base code, parse it and then index the resource, if there's any impact on search ranking. One of your most important SEO tasks is to make your resources easy for bots to crawl and index.

A type of website code which allows for easier page editing by designers and faster processing of HTML by search engines.

As of April 2, 2013, Google Places for Business no longer accepts custom-written categories. Business owners must choose from thousands of pre-set structured categories. If no exact category fits, they can select a general category or multiple categories for better context.

A discount that is used to enhance engagement from consumers to increase SEO visibility of a specific web presence.

Refers to an apparent relationship between two or more conditions wherein the relationship may or may not be interdependent. For instance, �When I stepped outside, I realized I was thirsty.� Thirst was not brought on by having stepped outside. It was correlated, but there was no causation in this instance.

Globally operating search engines like Google maintain separate indexes for each market, such as google.com for the US and google.co.jp for Japan. These national indexes allow search engines to tailor results to each market's search behavior and language, providing more relevant information than a universal index that includes data from all markets.

This is the storage of web content in memory, in order to be able to more readily serve them to a user. Caching commonly occurs on both servers and browsers.

A field in a local business listing set aside for adding information not covered by the standard fields, for example, brands carried, years in business, or the availability of on-site parking.

All of the potential moments when a prospect interacts with a brand, aiming to persuade them to become a customer. Though customer journeys can vary greatly by business type and industry, typically it is made up of four main: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Retention. Alternatively, Google’s Avinash Kaushik suggests: See, Think, Do, Care. Also known as the Buying Process, Consumer Decision Journey, Marketing Funnel, or Purchase Funnel.

A variant of the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) models developed by OpenAI, specifically designed to generate conversational text based on the input it receives. ChatGPT is trained on a diverse dataset to handle a wide range of topics in a conversational manner. The technology underpinning ChatGPT involves deep learning and natural language understanding, making it effective for tasks such as chatbots, customer service, and interactive applications.

Refers to the shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts, and interactions of individuals within a group, organization, or society. It involves the ability of a group to pool knowledge, skills, and insights to solve problems, make decisions, or create innovative solutions more effectively than individuals working alone. Collective intelligence can be facilitated by technology, communication networks, and social structures that enable cooperation and knowledge-sharing.

All the hard numbers that represent real customers � the who, what, where, when, why, and how � all of which is needed to make informed decisions about SEO strategies and tactics.

A defective link leads to nothing, often a 404 error page. It could also have no object that it is connected to.Most defective links have a bad address as its destination. It could also be caused by programming errors.Defective links will have a negative impact on a website and make a crawler's job more difficult. This leads to a website appearing lower on search result pages.

When an internal link points directly to a page other than the homepage on a site, this is known as a deep link. The ratio of deep links compared to links to your homepage is known as deep link ratio. It is considered that having links directly to deep pages in a site indicates quality of content on the site. The more deep links you have the better the site. There is no evidence to support that deep link ratio has any direct impact on ranking.

In Google Analytics, users that navigate directly to the site by typing the URL directly into the browser or by clicking on a bookmark are known as direct traffic. Google will also include into direct traffic any traffic sources it doesn�t recognize

A company with an explicit contract to supply local search engines with underlying business information. In the U.S., the major data providers are Infogroup, Localeze, Acxiom, and Factual. See also: aggregator, IYP (Internet Yellow Pages)

The number of unique individuals who request directions to your client's business. This metric originally tracked the number of unique customers who requested directions to your client's business. It has been updated also to show the location of customers making the direction request. Changes were also made to make this metric more accurate. It now accounts for things like multi-tapping, direction request cancellation, and spam. The new direction requests metric is in the Interactions section of the Performance page on Search, while the old metric is on the Insights page.

A webpage that links to no other webpages. So called because once a user or bot arrives on this page, there is no place to move forward.

A data aggregator is a company that collects data on local businesses such as their name, address, phone number, opening hours, etc. in order to present it elsewhere online. Data is verified then sold (leased) to other companies in need of local business data. Companies that typically buy this data are online directories (e.g. YP.com), local-mobile applications, and mapping and GPS companies (e.g. TomTom).

The date a domain was registered on, to the current date is known as domain age. For example, Search Engine Journal was registered on 10th June 2003, so it has a significant domain age. It was once considered that a greater domain age gave a domain more authority, but this idea of domain age as an influence on ranking has since been dismissed.

Domain Authority is a widely used metric created by Moz, not Google or any other search engine. It assigns a score out of 100 to websites, at the domain level, to represent its performance in search engines.

Domain popularity refers to the number of backlinks from different domains to a website and is a key factor in its importance to search engines. Unlike link popularity, which was easily manipulated, domain popularity measures how many unique domains link to a site, indicating its value and reputation.

A do-follow link is a standard link that doesn't use the Nofollow attribute. Do-follow links pass on PageRank, which potentially helps the page or site they link to. However, do-follow links can also have a negative impact if they link to/from lower quality sources or irrelevant pages.

The Open Directory Project. This human-edited directory of websites launched June 5, 1998 and closed March 17, 2017.

The web address or homepage of a particular business or organization. Examples: JoesPlumbing.com, PortlandDentists.com, etc. Domain names are reserved and purchased from domain name registrars. See also: WHOIS, URL (uniform resource locator)

A deep link simply directs one to another page within the same website. Well developed websites with typically have plenty of high-quality deep links. Deep links also make it significantly easier for the customer to navigate the website.

Domain Link: https://www.localclarity.com

Top Level Link: https://www.localclarity.com/solutions/

Deep Link: https://www.localclarity.com/solutions/full-service-review-management/

De-indexing is the process of a search engine removing a web resource from its results pages, either temporarily or permanently. In this case, the resource is no longer accessible from the search engine that de-indexed it.

Disallow is a rule used in robots.txt files to determine what parts of the website search engines' bots should not crawl. This is often used to maximize the crawl budget and prevent from duplicate content issues. When using it, make sure you're not blocking any page rendering resources, such as CSS or JavaScript. If you're unsure whether your rules will block those resources, use robots.txt tester in Google Search Console.

Any website which lists business names and contact information in an organized fashion, typically in alphabetical order or by business type. Directory information is frequently assimilated by the local search engines. For more information see: Local Directories and Citations

The amount of time that elapses between when a user clicks on a search result and then returns to the SERP from a website. Short dwell time (e.g., less than 5 seconds) can be an indicator of low-quality content to search engines.

It is speculated that requests for driving directions on applications like Google Maps count as user behavior, and may indicate the popularity of a local business and thus, have some effect on rankings. See also: user behavior

Any activity, including backlinks and website built on a domain previously is known as domain history. If a previous website on a domain received a penalty this will remain attached to the domain and cause issues for the new owner. It�s recommended to always check the domain history before you purchase a domain.

A doorway page is designed to attract SEO traffic but usually, includes very little or irrelevant content. Some contain a lot of ads while others simply aim to lead users on to another page that has nothing to do with what the doorway page ranks for in search engines.

A search engine that was founded September 28, 2008. It is often praised for its heavy focus on user privacy and a lack of filter bubbles (search personalization). DuckDuckGo relies on more than 400 sources to serve its search results, including vertical search engines, its own crawler, DuckDuckBot, Bing, and Yandex. In 2016, 4 billion searches were conducted on DuckDuckGo.

Duplicate content is simply repeated content that appears in different locations or even on the same page. There are instances where duplicate content is justified (eg: translations, different versions of the same product, etc.) but it's important you know how to deal with these issues.

A problematic scenario in which more than one Google Business Profile (GBP) local listing exists for a single business. Google allows only one listing per location, and intentional or accidental violation of this policy can lead to penalties and ranking issues. Steps must be taken to resolve duplicate listing issues.

Disavow is an action taken when you want to disassociate yourself with a particular site. As on the internet everyone can link to you, there might be sites you want Google to ignore. Links are a vital part of the ranking algorithm and is important that search engines find mostly high quality and relevant links to your site. Whether you are doing a proactive backlink audit or cleaning up after a link penalty, you will need a disavow file to upload to Google Search Console.

DeepMind is a pioneering AI research company, renowned for its groundbreaking work in developing advanced AI systems, particularly in the areas of reinforcement learning and neural networks. Acquired by Google, it gained fame for creating AlphaGo, the AI that defeated a world champion in the game of Go. DeepMind’s research focuses on solving complex scientific and real-world problems, with contributions in healthcare, protein folding (AlphaFold), and general AI. Positioned as a leader in AI research, it emphasizes building AI that can achieve human-level intelligence while advancing human knowledge.

A name used by a business that is different from its legal name, requiring registration with the state or country to operate under that name.

An EU regulation designed to promote fair competition by preventing large online platforms, or "gatekeepers," from engaging in anti-competitive practices. Adopted in 2022, it imposes obligations on major tech companies to ensure fair access and prevent self-preferencing.

Engaging content is content that keeps end users connected to a website for longer periods of time. This is generally done with unique articles or slideshows that provide relevant and interesting information.

A link that is given by one website to another without the recipient asking or paying for it. Also known as: Natural Link.

Methods to measure how users are interact with webpages and content. Examples of engagement metrics include: Click-through rate Conversion rate Bounce rate Time on page/site New vs. returning visitors Frequency and recency Dwell time

The buying and selling of products, all conducted online.

A broad term that refers to the amount of time users spend and/or the number of actions they take with any website, page, resource or application.

Educational-focused institutions have a top-level domain (TLD) of .edu. For example, stanford.edu. A link from such a site is known as a .edu link. Links from .edu sites were considered "hard to get" and thought to have more value for link building. As a result, link builders targeted .edu links until many of the lesser-known .edu sites became devalued by Google and any benefit of the link was ignored.

This is one of Google's most important "quality" metrics that aims to measure the usefulness and credibility of your site and its pages. Google wants to deliver the most useful possible content to users from sources it can trust and this metric analyses a wide range of signals to determine these factors. This Google quality metric measures a site's usefulness and credibility, focusing on expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T). It evaluates content quality, site information, and reputation. Google values "everyday expertise," recognizing that people with life experience can provide valuable insights, even without formal education, across various topics like fashion, humor, and forums.

Entities are unique things which exist independently, such as people, places or things, so a company can also be an entity, as can a country or planet.

This is the first page that a person sees when they visit a website. For a large majority of websites, this is also called the home page. A website's choice of entry page can make all the difference when it comes to relevance and the user finding the site/page useful.

Enterprise Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a specialized strategy and set of practices aimed at improving the online visibility and search engine rankings of businesses or organizations with multiple physical locations. The goal is to attract more local customers and drive foot traffic to each location by optimizing online assets for relevant local searches.

People, places, organizations, websites, events, groups, facts, and other things.

An external link is a hyperlink that leads to a page or resource outside a particular website. It is the opposite of an internal link, which links to URLs within the same domain. Backlinks or inbound links are sometimes called external incoming links

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The principles and practices that seek to ensure AI systems are developed and operated in a way that is morally sound and socially responsible. This involves considering the impact of AI technologies on individuals and society, ensuring fairness, transparency, accountability, and privacy in AI systems.

The methods and techniques in AI that make the outputs of AI models transparent and understandable to humans. This involves designing AI systems in such a way that their decisions, predictions, and actions can be easily interpreted by users, allowing for greater insight into the AI’s functioning and rationale.

AI systems designed to provide clear, understandable explanations for their decisions and actions, fostering trust and transparency. The goal of XAI is to ensure that AI-driven decisions and predictions can be explained in a way that users, regulators, and stakeholders can comprehend and trust.