SEO
SEO — search engine optimisation
Improving a website so search engines can understand it and people can find useful pages. It supports discovery; it does not guarantee a position.
Primary source ↗THE DGA SEARCH GLOSSARY
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A practical guide to SEO, AI search and GEO. Definitions are linked to primary sources and reviewed on 26 October 2026.
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19 terms
SEO
Crawling
A search engine’s automated discovery and fetching of web pages. A crawl is a visit, not confirmation that a page will be indexed.
Primary source ↗SEO
Indexing
Processing a page for potential inclusion in search results. A public, accessible page is not necessarily indexed or shown for a query.
Primary source ↗SEO
Keywords & search intent
Keywords describe the language people search with. Intent is the purpose behind the query. Useful content should address that need rather than repeat a phrase.
Primary source ↗SEO
Title & meta description
The title names a page; its meta description summarises it. Search engines may use different text when presenting a result.
Primary source ↗SEO
Internal linking
Links between pages on the same website. Descriptive links help visitors navigate and help search engines discover relevant pages.
Primary source ↗SEO
Canonical URL
The preferred representative URL for duplicate or very similar content. A declared canonical is a signal; Google can select a different URL.
Primary source ↗SEO
XML sitemap
A file listing preferred website URLs to aid discovery. It is not a guarantee of crawling, indexing or ranking, and does not replace useful navigation.
Primary source ↗SEO
robots.txt
A file that gives crawlers instructions about which paths they may request. It is not a secure way to hide private information or reliably remove indexed pages.
Primary source ↗SEO
Structured data / schema
Machine-readable descriptions of page content, often written in JSON-LD using schema.org terms. Eligible markup can support rich results, but display is not guaranteed.
Primary source ↗SEO
Core Web Vitals
User-experience measures covering loading performance, interaction responsiveness and visual stability: LCP, INP and CLS. They help identify experience problems, not business outcomes by themselves.
Primary source ↗Measurement
Google Search Console
Google’s free service for monitoring search visibility and investigating indexing issues. It reports what people search for; you do not upload a keyword list to rank.
Primary source ↗Measurement
Impressions, clicks & CTR
Impressions count eligible appearances in search reports; clicks count visits from those results. Click-through rate is clicks divided by impressions. Interpret these alongside enquiry quality and sales.
Primary source ↗AI & GEO
AI search
Search that uses generative AI to answer or explore questions, sometimes linking to web sources. Visibility depends on the experience and query.
Primary source ↗AI & GEO
GEO — generative engine optimisation
An industry term for work intended to improve visibility in generative search. Google treats optimisation for its AI search experiences as SEO, with no separate guaranteed shortcut.
Primary source ↗AI & GEO
AEO — answer engine optimisation
An industry term for improving visibility in answer-led search. It overlaps with SEO and GEO.
Primary source ↗AI & GEO
AI citation
A source reference in a generated answer. A mention alone is not a citation or endorsement.
Primary source ↗AI & GEO
Eligibility versus appearance
Meeting requirements allows consideration; it does not guarantee selection for an answer or result.
Primary source ↗AI & GEO
Special AI markup
Google requires no special schema.org type for generative search. Extra markup is not an AI ranking promise.
Primary source ↗No matching terms. Try a broader search.
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