AI, SEO, advertising, and web terms—explained clearly

Software that uses an AI model to choose and carry out steps toward a defined goal, often by calling approved tools or business systems.

A bounded process in which an AI model selects among allowed actions, evaluates intermediate results, and continues until a stop or review condition is reached.

Numerical representations that place text, images, or other content into a mathematical space where items with similar meaning are located near one another.

Additional model training on selected examples to change how an existing model responds, follows a format, or performs a specialized task.

The process of running a trained AI model on a new input to produce an output, such as a classification, summary, prediction, or generated response.

A machine-learning model trained on large text collections to interpret and generate language for tasks such as drafting, extraction, classification, and question answering.

AI software operated on computing infrastructure controlled at the organization’s own location or private facility rather than only through a public cloud service.

An AI deployment designed so an organization controls where its data, models, logs, and access policies are stored and processed.

The practice of designing instructions, context, examples, and output constraints so an AI model performs a task more reliably.

A pattern that retrieves relevant material from an approved source and supplies it to a generative model as context for a response.

A data store designed to index and search numerical vectors, commonly used to retrieve content by semantic similarity rather than exact keywords.

A distributed network that serves cached website assets from locations closer to visitors and can also provide traffic filtering and availability controls.

Software that lets authorized users create, edit, organize, and publish website content without directly changing application source code.

Google’s user-experience metrics for loading performance, interaction responsiveness, and visual stability, measured through LCP, INP, and CLS.

A hosting arrangement in which a provider operates defined parts of the server, deployment, monitoring, backup, update, and support process.

The cryptographic protocol used by HTTPS to authenticate a website connection and encrypt data moving between a visitor and the server.

The practice of making a real organization, person, place, product, or concept consistently identifiable across website content, structured data, and trusted external sources.

Work that makes accurate, useful content easier for AI-powered search and answer systems to discover, understand, retrieve, and cite.

Machine-readable structured data, commonly expressed as JSON-LD, that describes visible page content using a shared Schema.org vocabulary.

The practical job a person is trying to complete with a search, such as learning, comparing options, finding a provider, or completing a transaction.

The work of making a website reliably crawlable, indexable, canonical, fast, secure, and understandable to search engines without creating duplicate or misleading URLs.

Google’s business listing used to manage how an eligible organization appears in Maps and local search, including categories, hours, contact details, and updates.

An online mention of a business and its identifying details, commonly on directories, maps, professional associations, or local publications.

Consistency of a business’s public name, address, and phone number across its website, maps, directories, profiles, and other trusted references.

A planning document that defines a page’s audience, search intent, questions, evidence, structure, voice, conversion path, and editorial constraints before drafting begins.

Measurement that records when a visitor completes a defined business action, such as submitting a qualified form, booking a call, or making a purchase.

Terms used in paid-search campaigns to prevent ads from showing for searches that are irrelevant, unqualified, misleading, or outside the intended offer.

Advertising to an audience built from people who previously interacted with a website, app, content, or customer list, subject to platform and privacy rules.