Glossary
AI & SEO terms, explained simply.
Plain-English definitions of the terms that come up when discussing AI automation, SEO, GEO, and modern web development. No jargon within the jargon.
A
Agentic AI
AI systems designed to plan, reason, use tools, and autonomously execute multi-step tasks — going far beyond single-turn question-and-answer interactions.
AI Agent
A software system that can perceive its environment, make decisions, and take actions autonomously to achieve a goal.
AI Orchestration
The coordination of multiple AI models, tools, memory systems, and agents to complete complex multi-step tasks — managed by frameworks like LangChain or CrewAI.
AI Overviews
Google's AI-generated answer summaries that appear above organic search results, synthesising information from multiple sources to directly respond to a query.
AI Citation
When an AI search engine references your website as a source in its generated answer — the GEO equivalent of ranking on page one.
AI Crawlers
Automated bots operated by AI companies — including GPTBot, PerplexityBot, and ClaudeBot — that scan websites to build the knowledge bases powering AI search engines.
AI Search Engine
A search platform that generates direct answers using AI instead of listing links — including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Microsoft Copilot.
Answer-First Content
A content structure where the direct answer appears in the first sentence of each section, followed by supporting evidence — optimised for AI extraction and featured snippets.
API (Application Programming Interface)
A defined contract that allows software systems to communicate with each other — enabling one application to request data or trigger actions in another.
C
Chain-of-Thought Prompting
A prompting technique where an LLM is guided to show its reasoning step-by-step before arriving at a final answer — dramatically improving accuracy on complex tasks.
Context Window
The maximum amount of text an LLM can process in a single interaction — encompassing the full conversation history, system instructions, and documents provided.
Canonical Tag
An HTML tag that tells search engines which URL is the authoritative version of a page — preventing duplicate content issues when the same content is accessible at multiple URLs.
Crawl Budget
The number of pages search engine crawlers will visit on your site within a given period — a resource that must be managed carefully on large or programmatic sites.
Core Web Vitals
Google's set of user experience metrics (LCP, CLS, INP) that measure page loading, visual stability, and interactivity — used as a ranking signal.
Content Freshness
A ranking signal based on how recently content was published or updated — AI search engines cite recently updated content up to 3.2x more often than stale pages.
CI/CD
Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment — the engineering practice of automatically testing and deploying code changes, enabling teams to ship updates safely and frequently.
E
Embeddings
Numerical representations of text or data that capture semantic meaning — the foundational technology behind semantic search, RAG, and AI similarity matching.
Entity SEO
An approach to SEO that optimises for entities — people, organisations, places, concepts — rather than just keywords, aligning with how Google's Knowledge Graph understands the web.
E-E-A-T
Google's quality evaluation framework — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — used to assess the credibility of content and its creators.
Entity Disambiguation
The process of establishing a unique, verifiable identity for a person or company so search engines and AI systems can distinguish it from similar entities.
F
Fine-tuning
The process of further training a pre-trained AI model on a domain-specific dataset to improve its performance, tone, or knowledge for a particular task.
Function Calling
A capability that lets LLMs trigger predefined functions or external APIs — the mechanism that enables AI agents to take real-world actions rather than just generating text.
FAQPage Schema
A structured data type (schema.org/FAQPage) that marks up Q&A content, enabling rich results in Google and higher citation rates from AI search engines.
G
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)
The practice of optimising web content to be cited and surfaced in AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
Google Search Console
Google's free tool for monitoring search performance, submitting sitemaps, diagnosing indexing issues, and understanding which queries drive traffic.
H
Hallucination
When an AI model generates confident-sounding but factually incorrect, fabricated, or unsupported information.
Headless Architecture
A design pattern that decouples the frontend (presentation layer) from the backend — allowing each to be built, deployed, and scaled independently via APIs.
I
Internal Linking
Links from one page on a website to another page on the same site — distributing page authority, improving crawlability, and guiding users through related content.
IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
A telephony system that interacts with callers through voice prompts and key presses — increasingly replaced by AI voice agents.
L
LangGraph
A Python framework for building stateful, multi-step AI agent workflows as directed graphs — enabling complex orchestration of LLM calls, tools, and human checkpoints.
Large Language Model (LLM)
A type of AI model trained on vast amounts of text data, capable of generating, summarising, and reasoning about language.
llms.txt
A plain-text file placed at a website's root that provides structured, AI-readable information about the site — designed specifically for large language models and AI crawlers.
Latency
The delay between a user speaking and the AI voice agent responding — the single most critical metric in voice AI, where delays above 1.5 seconds feel unnatural.
M
Model Context Protocol (MCP)
An open standard that defines how AI models connect to external tools, data sources, and services — the 'USB-C port' for AI integrations, developed by Anthropic.
Meta Tags
HTML tags in your page's head section that tell search engines and browsers what your page is about — including the title, description, and indexing instructions.
Mobile-First Indexing
Google's approach of using the mobile version of your website as the primary version for crawling, indexing, and ranking.
Microservices
An architectural pattern where an application is built as a collection of small, independent services — each handling a specific function and communicating via APIs.
Multi-tenant SaaS
A SaaS architecture where a single software instance serves multiple customers, with each customer's data kept isolated from others.
MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
The simplest version of a product that delivers genuine value to early users — built specifically to validate core assumptions before investing in full development.
P
Prompt Engineering
The practice of designing and refining the instructions given to an AI model to produce better, more accurate, and more reliable outputs.
Programmatic SEO
A strategy where large numbers of SEO-optimised pages are automatically generated from structured data — enabling search visibility at scale without writing each page manually.
Page Speed
How fast your web page loads and becomes interactive — a direct Google ranking signal and a major factor in user experience and conversion rates.
R
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
A technique that combines an LLM with a retrieval system, allowing the AI to look up external documents before generating a response.
Revenue Cycle Management (RCM)
The end-to-end financial process healthcare organisations use to track patient care from registration through to final payment — a primary target for AI automation.
robots.txt
A plain-text file at the root of a website that instructs search engine crawlers which pages or directories they should not crawl — the first line of crawl management.
S
Search Intent
The underlying reason a user performs a search query — whether they want to learn something, find a website, research a purchase, or complete a transaction.
Semantic SEO
An approach to SEO focused on topic relevance and meaning rather than exact keyword matching — aligning content with search intent and the relationships between concepts.
Structured Data / Schema Markup
Machine-readable code added to web pages that helps search engines and AI systems understand page content and context.
sameAs (Schema Property)
A schema.org property that links an entity to its authoritative profiles on other platforms — confirming identity across LinkedIn, GitHub, and Crunchbase.
Sitemap (XML Sitemap)
An XML file that lists all important pages on your website, helping search engines and AI crawlers discover and index them efficiently.
Speech-to-Text (STT)
Technology that converts spoken audio into written text in real time — the listening layer of AI voice agents, powered by models like Deepgram and OpenAI Whisper.
SaaS Metrics
The key performance indicators for SaaS businesses — including MRR, ARR, churn rate, LTV, and CAC — used to measure health, growth, and unit economics.
Server-Side Rendering (SSR / SSG)
Rendering strategies that generate HTML on the server rather than in the browser — improving page load speed, SEO, and initial content visibility.
T
Technical SEO
The practice of optimising a website's technical infrastructure — crawlability, indexability, page speed, and site architecture — so search engines can find and rank it effectively.
Topical Authority
A site's perceived expertise on a specific subject, built by creating comprehensive, interlinked content that covers a topic cluster in depth.
Text-to-Speech (TTS)
Technology that converts written text into natural-sounding spoken audio — the speaking layer of AI voice agents, powered by models like ElevenLabs and OpenAI TTS.
Technical Co-founder
The founder responsible for technology strategy, product architecture, and engineering decisions in a startup — the person who owns how the product gets built.
V
Vector Database
A database optimised for storing and searching high-dimensional numerical representations of meaning (embeddings) — the storage layer that makes RAG and semantic search possible.
Voice Cloning
The process of creating a synthetic replica of a specific voice using AI — enabling consistent brand voices for AI agents and personalised voice experiences.
W
WebSocket
A protocol enabling a persistent, bidirectional connection between client and server — essential for real-time features like live chat, AI voice pipelines, and streaming data.
Webhook
An automated HTTP notification sent from one application to another when a specific event occurs — the 'push' alternative to polling an API for updates.
Browse by category
AI & Automation
- Chain-of-Thought Prompting →
- Embeddings →
- LangGraph →
- Model Context Protocol (MCP) →
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) →
- Zero-Shot Prompting →
- Agentic AI →
- AI Agent →
- AI Orchestration →
- Context Window →
- Fine-tuning →
- Function Calling →
- Hallucination →
- Large Language Model (LLM) →
- Prompt Engineering →
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) →
- Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) →
- Vector Database →
SEO & GEO
- Backlink →
- Canonical Tag →
- Crawl Budget →
- Domain Authority →
- Entity SEO →
- Internal Linking →
- Knowledge Graph →
- robots.txt →
- AI Overviews →
- Core Web Vitals →
- E-E-A-T →
- Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) →
- llms.txt →
- Programmatic SEO →
- Search Intent →
- Semantic SEO →
- Structured Data / Schema Markup →
- Technical SEO →
- AI Citation →
- AI Crawlers →
- AI Search Engine →
- Answer-First Content →
- Content Freshness →
- Entity Disambiguation →
- FAQPage Schema →
- Google Search Console →
- JSON-LD (Structured Data Format) →
- Meta Tags →
- Mobile-First Indexing →
- Open Graph Tags →
- Page Speed →
- sameAs (Schema Property) →
- Sitemap (XML Sitemap) →
- Topical Authority →