A/B testing is an experiment that assigns eligible participants to different versions of an experience so their outcomes can be compared under a defined measurement plan.

Account-based marketing (ABM) is an approach that coordinates marketing and sales around a defined set of target organizations and the stakeholders involved in their decisions.

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of making your brand and content easier to discover, understand, and reference in answers from AI-powered search engines and assistants.

An AI citation is a reference or link that an AI-generated answer presents as a source for information in its response.

AI Mode is a Google Search experience that uses AI-generated responses and follow-up questions to help people explore topics, comparisons, and complex research tasks.

An AI Overview is a Google Search feature that presents an AI-generated summary for some queries, often with links to supporting web pages.

AI referral traffic is website traffic for which analytics records an AI assistant or AI search experience as the referring source.

AI search refers to search experiences that use artificial intelligence to interpret a question, retrieve relevant information, and often generate a direct answer with links to supporting sources.

AI visibility is the extent to which a brand, product, or piece of content appears in relevant AI-generated answers, including mentions, recommendations, and links to its sources.

Anchor text is the visible clickable wording of a hyperlink that helps describe the destination to a reader and search system.

A backlink is a link on one website that points to a page on another website.

A brand mention is a reference to a business, product, or brand in content or an answer, whether or not it includes a link to the brand’s website.

Branded search is search activity involving a recognizable business, product, or brand name, often combined with another question or task.

A breadcrumb is a navigational trail that shows a page’s place within a website’s structure and offers links to broader sections.

Buyer intent is the inferred purpose and readiness behind a person’s research or actions as they explore a problem, evaluate solutions, or consider a purchase.

The buyer journey is the process through which a person or organization recognizes a need, explores approaches, evaluates options, and makes a purchase decision.

A buyer persona is a research-based description of a relevant type of stakeholder, including their responsibilities, decision needs, constraints, and questions.

A buying committee is the group of stakeholders who influence, evaluate, approve, or use a B2B purchase.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the cost assigned to acquiring new customers divided by the number of new customers acquired within a defined measurement scope.

A canonical URL is the representative URL a search system selects for a page or group of substantially similar pages, informed by signals such as canonical annotations and redirects.

Citation share is the proportion of citations attributed to a website or brand within a clearly defined set of answers, queries, or platform reporting data.

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is an estimate of the value a customer contributes over the relationship, using a stated model, time horizon, and revenue or profit basis.

A content brief is a planning document describing a piece of content’s audience, purpose, key questions, evidence, structure, and intended next step.

Content gap analysis is the process of identifying important audience questions or decision needs that existing content does not adequately answer.

A content refresh is an update to an existing page intended to improve its accuracy, relevance, clarity, or ability to serve the reader’s current task.

Conversational search is a search experience in which a person uses natural-language questions and follow-ups, with earlier context helping shape later responses.

A conversion funnel is a defined sequence of steps used to understand how people move toward a chosen action and where progression stops.

Conversion rate is the percentage of a defined audience that completes a specified action, using a consistent numerator, denominator, and time period.

Conversion tracking is the instrumentation and reporting used to record defined actions, such as successful enquiries, and connect them with relevant website or campaign context.

Core Web Vitals are web performance metrics covering loading experience, interaction responsiveness, and visual stability, currently represented by LCP, INP, and CLS.

Crawlability is a page or website’s ability to be discovered and fetched by the relevant search crawler.

Crawling is the process by which a search system discovers URLs and fetches their content to learn what is available on a website.

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of improving a digital experience so a greater share of eligible visitors take a meaningful desired action.

A call to action (CTA) is wording or an interface element that invites a person to take a specific next step, such as reading a guide or requesting an assessment.

Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of recorded impressions that result in a click, calculated as clicks divided by impressions multiplied by 100.

Demand generation is the work of building awareness, understanding, and interest in a business or solution among the people and companies it aims to serve.

Engagement rate is a proportion of activity meeting a tool’s defined engagement criteria; in GA4, it is engaged sessions divided by total sessions.

Entity SEO is work that helps search systems understand identifiable people, organizations, products, and concepts, and the relationships between them.

Form abandonment describes people beginning a form but not completing the defined successful submission within the measurement scope.

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of improving how a brand and its content are represented, referenced, or cited in answers produced by generative AI systems.

Grounding is the practice of connecting an AI-generated response to supplied or retrieved information so its claims can be assessed against relevant evidence.

An AI hallucination is generated information that is fabricated, inaccurate, or unsupported by the relevant evidence, even when the response sounds plausible.

An ideal customer profile (ICP) describes the type of organization best suited to an offer, using meaningful characteristics such as needs, operating context, size, and constraints.

Inbound lead generation is the process of attracting relevant prospects through useful content and discoverable experiences, then giving them a clear way to express interest in a business.

Indexability describes whether a page’s technical settings and served content permit a search system to consider it for inclusion in its index.

Indexing is the process by which a search system analyzes and stores eligible page information in its index so that it can potentially be retrieved for relevant searches.

Internal linking is the practice of connecting pages within the same website through links that help people and search engines discover and understand related content.

Keyword cannibalization describes a situation in which multiple pages on a website overlap in purpose and target searches enough to create unclear or competing signals about the preferred destination.

Keyword research is the process of identifying and evaluating the words, questions, and topics people use when searching for information, products, or services.

A knowledge graph is a structured representation of entities, such as organizations or products, and the relationships that connect them.

A landing page is the page a visitor reaches when opening a link; in marketing, the term often describes a page designed around a specific audience and action.

Lead nurturing is the ongoing provision of relevant information and appropriate follow-up to help a prospect understand a problem, assess options, and decide on a useful next step.

Lead qualification is the process of assessing whether a prospect fits the business’s offer and has enough relevant need or readiness to justify a defined next step.

Lead scoring is a model that assigns values to prospect characteristics or behaviors to help prioritize assessment and follow-up.

A large language model (LLM) is a machine-learning model trained on extensive text data to recognize language patterns and generate responses from the context it receives.

A long-tail keyword is a comparatively specific search query associated with a narrower slice of search demand, often expressing more context than a broad topic phrase.

A macro conversion is a primary action chosen as a meaningful outcome for a website or campaign, such as a completed purchase or submitted sales enquiry.

Marketing attribution is the method used to assign credit for a conversion or commercial outcome to the marketing interactions recorded in a customer journey.

Marketing-influenced pipeline is the count or value of opportunities associated with qualifying marketing interactions under a defined influence model and time window.

Marketing-sourced pipeline is the value or count of opportunities whose origin is attributed to marketing under a documented source and opportunity-qualification rule.

Message match is the alignment between the promise or context of a link, search result, or campaign and the information presented on its destination page.

A meta description is an HTML summary of a page that a search engine may use as the descriptive snippet beneath its result title.

A micro conversion is an intermediate action indicating useful progression toward a broader goal, such as opening a guide or starting an enquiry form.

A marketing-qualified lead (MQL) is a lead that meets an organization’s agreed marketing criteria for relevant fit and interest sufficient for a defined next step.

Noindex is a supported robots directive telling a search system not to include a page in its search index after the system has fetched and processed that instruction.

Non-branded search is search activity about topics, problems, or categories without explicitly naming the business or brand being measured.

Organic search refers to the unpaid search results a search engine returns based on its systems’ assessment of relevance and usefulness, rather than an advertiser purchasing that placement.

Pipeline generation is the work of creating new suitable sales opportunities with defined needs and enough qualification to enter the business’s opportunity process.

Product-led growth is a growth approach in which direct product experience plays a central role in acquisition, activation, expansion, or retention.

Prompt monitoring is the practice of repeatedly testing a documented set of questions in AI systems to observe brand presence, citations, and answer accuracy over time.

A qualified lead is a prospective customer assessed as meeting a business’s agreed criteria for fit and relevant interest, with enough information to justify an appropriate next step.

Query fan-out is a technique in which a search experience generates multiple related searches from an initial question to gather information across relevant subtopics.

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is an approach that retrieves relevant information from a data source and supplies it to a generative model as context for an answer.

A redirect is a server or browser instruction that sends a request from one URL to another destination.

A referring domain is a distinct website domain containing one or more links to a particular website or page.

Revenue attribution is the method used to assign credit for recorded revenue to eligible marketing or sales interactions under a defined model.

Robots.txt is a text file at a website’s root that provides supported instructions about which URLs participating crawlers may fetch.

The sales cycle is the process and elapsed time over which a prospect or opportunity moves from a defined starting point to a commercial decision.

A sales funnel is a model showing how a defined group of prospects progresses through commercial stages toward becoming customers.

A sales pipeline is the organized set of active sales opportunities, with their stages, values, owners, and expected next steps.

A search impression is a recorded instance of a result appearing under the counting rules of a search platform’s reporting system.

Search intent is the purpose behind a person’s query: what they want to learn, find, compare, or do when they use a search engine or ask an AI assistant a question.

Search ranking describes where a page or result is positioned within the results returned for a particular query and context.

Semantic search is an approach to retrieval that considers meaning and context, rather than relying only on exact matches between the words in a query and a document.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving a website’s ability to be discovered, understood, and shown in relevant organic search results.

A search engine results page (SERP) is the page or interface displaying results and search features in response to a query.

Share of voice is a measure of a brand’s share of visibility or mentions within a specified channel, topic set, and group of competitors.

Social proof is evidence from other people or organizations that helps a prospective buyer assess the credibility and relevance of an offer.

A sales-qualified lead (SQL) is a prospect assessed by sales as meeting the agreed criteria for a relevant, actionable sales conversation or next stage.

Statistical significance describes a result meeting a predefined statistical criterion for evidence against a specified null hypothesis, under the assumptions of the test.

Structured data is standardized markup that describes the information on a page in a format machines can interpret, such as an organization, article, or product.

Technical SEO is the work of improving a website’s technical setup so search engines can discover, crawl, render, and index the pages intended to appear in search.

A title tag is the HTML title element that names a web page for browsers and can help search engines create the page’s displayed title in results.

A topic cluster is a group of related pages organized around a central subject, with links that connect a broad overview to more focused explanations.

Topical authority is an industry term for the depth, expertise, and credibility a website demonstrates within a particular subject area.

UTM parameters are URL query parameters used to label marketing links so analytics can identify campaign context such as source, medium, and campaign name.

A value proposition is a clear explanation of the useful outcome an offer provides, who it serves, and why that audience should consider it.

A website audit is a structured review of a site’s technical setup, content, usability, and measurement against its intended audience and business goals.

An XML sitemap is a machine-readable file that lists selected website URLs and related information to help search systems discover the content.

A zero-click search is a search interaction in which the user does not click through to an external website after viewing the results or answer.