Glossary

Terms and abbreviations used in Signal Strength reports.

SERP

Search Engine Results Page

The list of results a search engine shows in response to a query - the organic links, paid ads, and any rich features like snippets or Knowledge Panel cards.

Also: SERP feature

E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness

Google's content-quality framework used by human quality raters and - in effect - by its ranking algorithm, with particular weight for pages that affect health, finances, or safety (YMYL).

Also: EEAT

QRG

Quality Rater Guidelines

Google's public document guiding the human raters who score search quality. Effectively the specification for what Google considers a 'helpful' result.

Also: Search Quality Rater Guidelines

canonical

The preferred URL for a piece of content. Declared via so that duplicate or near-duplicate pages don't split their ranking signal.

schema

Schema.org structured data

Machine-readable metadata embedded in pages (usually as JSON-LD) that describes what the page is about - an article, product, FAQ, local business, and so on. Enables rich results in search and answer engines.

Also: JSON-LD, structured data

robots.txt

A plain-text file at the root of a domain (/robots.txt) that tells crawlers which paths they may or may not request. Not an access control - cooperative crawlers obey it; others ignore it.

sitemap

An XML file listing the URLs a site wants indexed. Located at /sitemap.xml by default. Includes metadata like last-modified dates and priority hints.

Core Web Vitals

CWV

Three user-experience metrics Google uses as a ranking factor: LCP (loading speed), INP (interaction responsiveness), and CLS (layout stability).

Also: CWV

LCP

Largest Contentful Paint

Time until the largest visible element in the viewport is rendered. A Core Web Vital; Google's 'good' threshold is under 2.5 seconds.

INP

Interaction to Next Paint

Time from a user interaction (tap, click) until the next visible response. A Core Web Vital; 'good' threshold is under 200ms.

CLS

Cumulative Layout Shift

A score measuring unexpected layout shifts during page load. A Core Web Vital; 'good' threshold is under 0.1.

TTFB

Time To First Byte

Time from request until the first byte of the response is received. Under 200ms is fast; over 800ms signals server-side performance issues.

Rich Results

Enhanced search listings that include structured data beyond the standard title/URL/description - stars, images, FAQs, how-to steps, recipes. Requires qualifying schema markup.

Knowledge Graph

Google's structured database of entities (people, places, things) and their relationships. Inclusion drives brand Panels and disambiguates your entity in AI answer engines.

Local Pack

The map + three business listings Google shows for location-relevant queries. Appearance depends on local signals, reviews, and Google Business Profile completeness.

featured snippet

A direct answer Google lifts from a page and displays above the organic results. Capturing one requires concise answers to direct questions, often in list or table form.

PAA

GPTBot

OpenAI's web crawler. Identified by user-agent 'GPTBot'. Site owners can allow or block it via robots.txt to control inclusion in ChatGPT's browsing and training data.

ClaudeBot

Anthropic's web crawler. Identified by user-agent 'ClaudeBot'. Controls Claude's web-search access.

Google-Extended

Google's opt-out token for AI-training use. Allowing Google-Extended in robots.txt permits Google to use crawled content for Gemini and AI Overviews; disallowing opts out without affecting classical Search ranking.

PerplexityBot

Perplexity.ai's web crawler. Controls inclusion in Perplexity's citation pool.

AI Overviews

Google's AI-generated answer blocks that appear above traditional organic results for many queries. Citation in an AI Overview is a major visibility win and often comes from pages with strong schema and standalone-extractable content.

llms.txt

An emerging convention: a Markdown file at /llms.txt that tells AI systems how to interact with your site - usage guidelines, key documentation, crawler directives. Spec: llmstxt.org.

citation

In the AI-search sense: when an answer engine quotes or links a specific page as a source. Citation rate is the modern equivalent of ranking position.

hallucination

An AI-generated statement that is confidently presented but factually wrong. Common when the model lacks grounding data; fixable by strengthening schema, public entity data, and first-party content.

grounding

Providing an AI system with structured, authoritative data (schema, Wikidata, official bios) so its answers about your entity are fact-checked against real sources instead of guessed.

sameAs

A Schema.org property linking your Organization to authoritative profiles elsewhere - Wikidata, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, social accounts. Strengthens Knowledge Graph grounding.

CrUX

Chrome UX Report

Real-world performance data collected from Chrome users. The source of truth for Core Web Vitals field data. Distinct from lab tests (Lighthouse).

GSC

Google Search Console

Google's dashboard for site owners showing impressions, clicks, queries, and indexing issues. Source of truth for how your site actually performs in Google Search.

Also: Google Search Console

branded vs non-branded

Branded keywords contain your brand name; non-branded don't. A healthy search portfolio grows non-branded traffic over time - branded traffic is people who already know you.

striking distance

Keywords currently ranking between positions 5 and 20 - close to page-one visibility, responsive to focused optimisation. High-ROI targets.

keyword difficulty

A 0-100 estimate of how hard a keyword is to rank for, based on the authority of current top-ranking pages. Useful for prioritising low-difficulty high-intent terms.

DA/DR

Domain Authority / Domain Rating

Third-party predictive scores for a domain's ranking strength, derived from backlink profiles. Not a Google metric; useful for competitor benchmarking, not absolute ground truth.