The SEO glossary for buyers
Short, sourced definitions of the terms that come up when you buy search work: SEO, GEO and AI search, conversion rate optimization, analytics and the platforms your site runs on. Each entry opens on a plain answer, says why it matters to you, and links to the deeper guide.
30 minutes. No pitch deck. You leave with a prioritised plan.
Search has picked up a second vocabulary in two years. The old one, rankings, backlinks, Core Web Vitals, never went away, and a new one arrived on top of it: AI Overviews, AI Mode, query fan-out, citations, GEO. Proposals mix the two freely, and it is hard to judge a plan when half of its nouns are unfamiliar.
This glossary is the reference we wish buyers had before a sales call. Every entry opens on a definition short enough to read in one breath, then says two things a generic dictionary does not: why the term should matter to someone paying for the work, and how it is actually measured or applied. Where a claim rests on a search engine's documentation or a piece of research, the source is listed at the foot of the entry.
How is the glossary organised?
Alphabetically, with a filter for five areas: SEO, GEO and AI search, conversion rate optimization, analytics, and the platforms sites are built on. Terms link to their neighbours, so an entry on AI Overviews points on to query fan-out and zero-click searches, and each one links down to the longer guide on the blog when that guide is live.
What will you not find here?
Invented numbers. Where a figure appears it comes from the named source. We also leave out jargon that exists only to sell a tool, and we say plainly when a term is overhyped, as the entry on llms.txt does.
A
- Attribution model
- An attribution model is the rule a reporting system uses to decide how much credit each marketing touchpoint gets for a conversion when a visitor interacted with several channels before converting, such as an organic search visit followed later by a direct return visit that completes a purchase.
- Average position
- Average position is the mean ranking position a page held in Google's search results for a given query or set of queries, as reported in Search Console, averaged across every time it appeared, at any position, not only when a visitor actually clicked through.
B
- Branded search
- Branded search is a query that includes a business's own name or a close variant of it, such as "RankPearl reviews" or "RankPearl pricing," as opposed to a non-branded query that describes a need or category without naming any specific business, such as "SEO agency."
C
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Click-through rate (CTR) is the share of people who saw a link and clicked it, calculated as clicks divided by impressions.
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Customer acquisition cost is the average amount spent to acquire one new customer through a given channel, calculated by dividing total spend on that channel over a period by the number of new customers it produced in the same period.
E
- Engagement rate
- Engagement rate is a GA4 metric measuring the percentage of sessions that were "engaged," meaning they lasted at least ten seconds, included a key event, or included at least two page or screen views.
G
- Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google's current web and app analytics platform.
- Google Search Console (GSC)
- Google Search Console is Google's free tool for monitoring and managing how a site performs in Google Search: which queries and pages get impressions and clicks, which URLs are indexed and why others are not, and technical issues affecting Core Web Vitals, mobile usability and structured data.
I
- Impressions
- Impressions are the number of times a page appeared in Google's search results for a query, whether or not the searcher scrolled to see it or clicked on it.
K
- Key event (GA4)
- A key event is a GA4 event marked as representing an action particularly important to the business, such as a form submission, a purchase or a booked call.
O
- Organic traffic
- Organic traffic is visits to a website that arrive from unpaid search engine results, as distinct from paid search ads, social media, direct visits or referral links from other sites.
R
- Rank tracking
- Rank tracking is the practice of regularly recording a site's search ranking position for a defined list of target keywords, using a dedicated tool that performs automated searches, to monitor movement over time.
U
- UTM parameters
- UTM parameters are tags added to the end of a URL, naming its source, medium and campaign, that tell an analytics platform exactly where a click came from.
Z
- Zero-click search rate
- Zero-click search rate is the share of searches that end without the searcher clicking through to any website, because the answer was shown on the results page itself, in an AI summary, a featured snippet, a knowledge panel or a map listing, or because the searcher refined the query instead.
Questions we get asked
Who writes these definitions?
The two founders, Ibrahem Helal and Jeremy Zava, write and review every entry. Each one names at least one source you can check, usually the search engine's own documentation or the original research, so you are not taking a definition on our word alone.
Why does every entry open with a short paragraph?
Because that paragraph is the answer. It is written to make sense on its own in forty to sixty words, which is also the shape search features and AI assistants quote. The rest of the entry says why the term matters to a buyer and how it is measured or applied.
What is the difference between SEO, GEO and AEO?
SEO gets pages ranked in search results. GEO gets a brand named and cited in answers from assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI features. AEO is the older label for structuring answers so search features can lift them. The work overlaps heavily, and each has its own entry here.
How often are new terms added?
Two a day from 24 September 2026 until the planned list of 120 terms is complete, then as new terms enter common use. Entries are updated when the underlying documentation changes, and the date on each entry says when that last happened.
Can I quote or link to a definition?
Yes. Link to the entry's own page so readers get the source list with it. If a definition is wrong or out of date, email us and we will correct it and change the date on the entry.
Do you sell every service described here?
No. The glossary covers terms buyers meet whoever they hire. Where we do the work, the entry links to the service page; where we do not, it says what the term means and stops there.
Thirty minutes to see where your site is invisible.
Book a free consultation with Ibrahem and Jeremy. We look at your site on search, AI answers and conversion while we talk, and you leave with a prioritised plan.
30 minutes. No pitch deck. You leave with a prioritised plan.