Glossary
The terms behind search, AI visibility and how BOOSTD works
Plain definitions of the words used across this site and in most marketing reports: SEO, canonicals, structured data, E-E-A-T, AEO and GEO, AI citations and share of voice, and the terms BOOSTD uses for its own automation. Each one says where it stops and links to the page that goes further.
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How these definitions are written
Each definition is the version we would want read back to us: what the term means, what it does not mean, and the point where it stops being useful. Where a term is a hint that a search engine weighs rather than an instruction it follows, the definition says so, because that is where most bad advice about it begins.
Terms with more to them than a paragraph have their own page with sources. Where another page on this site already explains a term properly, such as technical SEO, Core Web Vitals, AEO and GEO, the entry links there instead of repeating it.
Search
Search fundamentals
The terms most SEO conversations assume you already know. Several are routinely misused, usually in the direction of making a hint sound like an instruction.
SEO (search engine optimisation)
The work of making a site easy for search engines to crawl, understand and trust, and worth choosing when it appears. It covers technical health, content that answers real searches, and the authority other sites lend you. It earns visibility over time. It cannot buy a position, and nobody can honestly promise one.
Technical SEO
The part of SEO concerned with whether search engines can reach, render and index your pages: status codes, redirects, canonicals, sitemaps, robots rules, JavaScript rendering and speed. It removes obstacles. It does not make a weak page worth ranking.
Canonical URL
The address a search engine treats as the original when the same content is reachable at several URLs. You state a preference with a canonical tag or a redirect; the search engine makes the final choice, and it can disagree with you when your other signals point elsewhere.
Internal linking
Links from one page of your site to another. They are how crawlers find pages, how anchor text tells a search engine what the target is about, and how a site signals which pages matter. A page nothing links to is, for practical purposes, a page nobody finds.
Structured data (schema markup)
A machine-readable description of what a page contains, usually written in JSON-LD using the schema.org vocabulary. It can make a page eligible for rich results. It must describe what the page visibly says, and it does not guarantee any search feature.
Core Web Vitals
Google’s three field measurements of page experience: Largest Contentful Paint for loading, Interaction to Next Paint for responsiveness, and Cumulative Layout Shift for visual stability. They are judged on real visitors’ data, not a lab test. Passing them helps; it rarely outweighs relevance.
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness: the qualities Google asks its human quality raters to look for. It describes what good content shows, not a score a page carries. Trust is the part Google calls most important.
AI search
AI search and answer engines
A vocabulary still settling. Where a term is contested or measured differently by different tools, the definition says so rather than picking a side quietly.
AEO (answer engine optimisation)
Writing and structuring content so a search engine or assistant can lift a direct answer from it: a clear question, a plain answer in the first sentence or two, then the conditions. It aims at featured snippets, voice answers and AI summaries, and overlaps heavily with good SEO.
GEO (generative engine optimisation)
Improving the chance that a generative system, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overviews, uses and cites your content when it writes an answer. The term was coined in a 2023 research paper. The practice is young, and nobody controls the output.
AI visibility
Whether, and how, AI assistants and AI search features mention your business for the questions your customers ask. It is measured by running a fixed set of prompts repeatedly, because answers change between runs. Any AI visibility figure is a sample and should say so.
LLM visibility
AI visibility narrowed to large language model assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot, including answers drawn from what a model learned in training rather than from a live search. The trained part moves slowly and cannot be edited directly.
AI Overviews
Google’s generated summaries shown with the search results for some queries, with links to the sources used. They can answer a question without a click, which is why their effect on traffic is disputed. Being cited in one can be influenced, never guaranteed.
Citation
Two different things. A local citation is a listing elsewhere on the web that names your business, address and phone number. An AI citation is a source link an AI answer shows. They share a word and are won in completely different ways.
AI share of voice
Your share of the brand mentions, or citations, across a defined set of AI answers, compared with the competitors you track. The number depends entirely on the prompt set and the denominator chosen, so a figure without its method is not comparable with anything.
Local
Local search
Two terms that decide most of what a local business sees in Maps and the map pack.
Local SEO
Visibility for searches with local intent: the map pack, Google Maps and “near me” results. Google says relevance, distance and prominence decide them, which is why a complete Business Profile, reviews and consistent business details matter more here than in ordinary results.
NAP (name, address, phone)
The details that identify a business across its website, its Business Profile and the directories that list it. When they disagree, a search engine is less sure two listings are the same business. A service-area business hides its address from the public; it keeps the rest identical everywhere.
BOOSTD
How BOOSTD works
Our own terms, defined the way the product uses them. BOOSTD is in early access, so these describe how it is built to behave, and the linked pages say what is running today.
Growth Score
BOOSTD’s 0 to 100 summary of how well placed a business is to grow through search, AI answers, local presence, trust and conversion. Categories are weighted by business model, and one that does not apply is left out rather than scored zero.
Safe Autopilot
“BOOSTD automatically handles low-risk improvements and asks before material changes.” The recommended mode. Low-risk, one-step-reversible work such as titles, alt text, structured data and safe internal links runs on its own; copy, new pages and redirects wait for you.
Approval Mode
“BOOSTD prepares work for your approval.” BOOSTD monitors, analyses and prepares changes, and nothing is applied until you approve it. It suits businesses that want to see every change before it happens, however small.
Full Autopilot
“BOOSTD can execute broadly within your rules. Critical actions still remain protected.” For teams that have written down which pages, kinds of change and dates are allowed. Protected pages such as checkout, login and legal stay protected in every mode.
Rollback
Putting back the version that existed before a change. BOOSTD saves the previous version before it writes anything, so undoing is one step. A change is reversed automatically when the check after it fails: errors, a wrong canonical or noindex, a broken form.
Entitlement and capacity
Entitlement is what your plan permits BOOSTD to do. Capacity is how much of it can run in a period. BOOSTD still finds and shows work beyond either; it queues or offers it instead of running it, and it never quietly does less or charges more.
See these terms applied to your own site
The Free Growth Scan reads your public pages and checks several of the things defined here, including canonicals, structured data and internal links, then says plainly which categories it could not measure.
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