Free resources SEO, GEO and Reviews courses
The glossary
Every term the three courses use, in plain English, with a link to the lesson that explains it properly. In the lessons, tap any word with a dotted underline to see its definition.
49 terms
#
- 301 redirect
- A permanent forward from an old web address to a new one, so people and search engines land on the right page and the old page's standing carries over.
- Learn it properly: SEO 2.5 →
- 404 (page not found)
- The error a page returns when it doesn't exist. Fine for pages that are truly gone; a problem when it replaces a page people and AI tools still link to.
- Learn it properly: SEO 2.5 →
A
- AI Mode
- Google's conversational search, where the whole answer is written by AI with links to its sources. Built on the same systems as ordinary Google Search.
- Learn it properly: GEO 1.2 →
- AI Overviews
- The AI-written summary that appears above some Google results, with links to the pages it drew on.
- Learn it properly: GEO 1.2 →
- Alt text
- A short written description of an image, read out by screen readers and used by search engines and AI tools to understand what the picture shows.
- Learn it properly: SEO 6.4 →
- Anchor text
- The clickable words of a link. They tell people, and search engines, what the page on the other end is about.
- Learn it properly: SEO 2.2 →
B
- Backlink
- A link to your website from someone else's. Links from relevant, respected local sites help; bought or swapped links can get you penalised.
- Learn it properly: SEO 7.1 →
- Bing Webmaster Tools
- Microsoft's free dashboard for your site in Bing, which also feeds Copilot. It now reports how often Copilot cites your pages.
- Learn it properly: GEO 2.1 →
C
- Canonical URL
- The one “official” address for a page that can be reached at several, so search engines know which version to show and count.
- Learn it properly: SEO 2.4 →
- CDN
- Content delivery network: a service such as Cloudflare that sits in front of your site to speed it up and block attacks. Its bot settings can block AI crawlers without anyone deciding to.
- Learn it properly: GEO 3.1 →
- Citation (AI)
- When an AI answer shows your page or profile as one of its sources, usually as a numbered link. Different from a mention, which names you without a link.
- Learn it properly: GEO 1.1 →
- Client money protection
- Insurance-backed protection for rent and deposits a letting agent holds. Letting agents in England must belong to a scheme and say which one, beside their fees.
- Learn it properly: SEO 8.3 →
- CMA
- The Competition and Markets Authority, which enforces UK consumer law, including the ban on fake reviews. It can fine up to 10% of global turnover or £300,000, whichever is higher.
- Learn it properly: Reviews 2.3 →
- Core Web Vitals
- Google's three measures of how a page feels to use: how fast the main content loads, how quickly it responds to a tap, and whether things jump around while loading.
- Learn it properly: SEO 4.1 →
- Crawl
- A search engine or AI tool visiting a page and reading it. If a page can't be crawled, nothing else you do on it counts.
- Learn it properly: SEO 2.1 →
- Crawler (bot)
- The software that visits pages for a search engine or AI tool, such as Googlebot, Bingbot or OAI-SearchBot. Each has a name your robots.txt can allow or block.
- Learn it properly: GEO 3.1 →
- CTR
- Click-through rate: of the people who saw your result, the share who clicked it.
- Learn it properly: SEO 5.7 →
D
- DMCC Act
- The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. Since April 2025 it bans fake reviews outright, along with misleading omissions such as missing material information on listings.
- Learn it properly: Reviews 2.3 →
E
- E-E-A-T
- Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness: how Google describes content it can trust. Not a single score, but what its systems aim to reward.
- Learn it properly: SEO 8.1 →
- Entity
- A clearly identifiable thing, such as one specific agency, that search engines and AI tools can tell apart from everything else with a similar name.
- Learn it properly: GEO 4.1 →
G
- GEO
- Generative engine optimisation: making your agency easy for AI search and assistants to find, understand, describe accurately and recommend. Also called AEO or LLMO.
- Learn it properly: GEO 1.1 →
- Google Business Profile
- Your free listing on Google Maps and Search: name, address, phone, hours, categories, photos and reviews. Often the first thing people see.
- Learn it properly: SEO 3.1 →
- Google-Extended
- A setting in robots.txt that controls whether Gemini can use your content for training and grounding. It doesn't affect Google Search or AI Overviews.
- Learn it properly: GEO 3.1 →
- Grounding
- When an AI assistant searches the web live and writes its answer from what it finds, instead of answering only from what it learned in training.
- Learn it properly: GEO 1.2 →
I
- Index
- A search engine's catalogue of the pages it can show. A page that isn't indexed can't appear in results, or in the AI answers built on them.
- Learn it properly: SEO 2.1 →
- IndexNow
- A free way to tell Bing and some other search engines the moment a page changes, instead of waiting for them to notice.
- Learn it properly: GEO 3.2 →
K
- Knowledge panel
- The information box Google shows for well-known organisations. For most local agents, the Business Profile plays this role instead.
- Learn it properly: GEO 4.3 →
L
- llms.txt
- A proposed file for guiding AI tools around a site. Google says it doesn't use it, and no AI company has said it improves citations.
- Learn it properly: GEO 1.4 →
M
- Manual action
- A penalty applied by a person at Google after reviewing your site for spam. Search Console tells you about it, and you can ask for a review once it's fixed.
- Learn it properly: SEO 9.1 →
- Material information
- What a buyer or tenant needs to decide whether to view: price or rent, council tax band, tenure and more. Leaving it out of a listing can break consumer law.
- Learn it properly: SEO 6.1 →
- Mention (AI)
- When an AI answer names your agency, with or without a link. Being named is often worth more than a click, but your analytics never sees it.
- Learn it properly: GEO 1.1 →
- Meta description
- The short summary you write for a page, which Google sometimes shows under your result. It doesn't affect ranking, but a good one earns the click.
- Learn it properly: SEO 5.7 →
N
- Named in X of N runs
- The honest way to measure AI visibility: run the same prompt many times and report how often you're named. A single run, or your “position”, tells you very little.
- Learn it properly: GEO 2.3 →
- NAP
- Name, address, phone: the details that should be identical everywhere your agency appears online, so every mention points to one business.
- Learn it properly: SEO 3.4 →
- noindex
- A tag that tells search engines not to show a page. Useful on search filters; a disaster when it's left on a key page after a website launch.
- Learn it properly: SEO 2.1 →
P
- PECR
- The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations: the UK rules on cookies, marketing emails, texts and automated calls.
- Learn it properly: Reviews 2.4 →
- Prompt bank
- Your list of the real questions customers ask, in their own words, sorted by audience and stage. The basis of fair AI testing.
- Learn it properly: GEO 2.2 →
Q
- Query fan-out
- When an AI tool quietly splits one question into several searches and combines what it finds. Pages that answer the sub-questions can be used even if they never match the original question.
- Learn it properly: GEO 6.2 →
R
- Redress scheme
- An independent ombudsman agents must belong to, such as The Property Ombudsman, which handles complaints a client can't resolve with the agency.
- Learn it properly: SEO 8.3 →
- Renters' Rights Act
- The 2025 law that changed renting in England from 1 May 2026: no more section 21 evictions, periodic tenancies, one advertised rent and no rental bidding.
- Learn it properly: GEO 8.2 →
- Response rate
- The share of your reviews that have a reply. Customers can see it at a glance, which is the main reason to keep it high.
- Learn it properly: Reviews 5.2 →
- Review gating
- Asking only the clients you think are happy for a review, or screening people before sending the review link. Banned by Google and unlawful under UK consumer law.
- Learn it properly: Reviews 2.3 →
- robots.txt
- A small file at the root of your site that tells crawlers which parts they may visit. One wrong line can switch off your whole site.
- Learn it properly: SEO 2.1 →
S
- Scaled content abuse
- Google's name for producing lots of pages mainly to rank rather than to help, whether written by people, templates or AI. It's against its spam policies.
- Learn it properly: SEO 5.5 →
- Schema (structured data)
- Hidden labels in a page's code that tell machines what information means: this is the agency's name, this is its phone number, this is a property's price.
- Learn it properly: SEO 2.6 →
- Search Console
- Google's free dashboard for your site: which searches show it, which pages are indexed, and any problems Google has found.
- Learn it properly: SEO 1.3 →
- SERP
- Search engine results page: everything you see after you search, including ads, the map, AI summaries and the ordinary links.
- Learn it properly: SEO 1.1 →
- Sitemap
- A list of the pages on your site, kept in a file for search engines, so new and changed pages are found quickly.
- Learn it properly: SEO 2.3 →
- Speed-to-lead
- How quickly a real person replies after someone enquires. Often decides which agent a seller invites first.
- Learn it properly: GEO 9.2 →