Voice search; the practice of using spoken queries, through a smartphone, smart speaker, or voice assistant, to search the web or ask a question, instead of typing. Tends to favor
Knowledge graph; a database of real-world entities, people, places, organizations, concepts, and the relationships between them, that search engines use to understand and connect information rather than treating each webpage
E-E-A-T; a framework Google’s quality raters use to assess content, standing for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Not a direct ranking factor itself, but a heavy influence on the systems
Semantic search; a search approach that interprets the meaning and intent behind a query rather than matching only the literal keywords typed in, allowing more conversational or vaguely worded searches
LLM, or large language model; the type of AI system, trained on massive amounts of text, that powers chatbots and answer engines like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok. The underlying
Schema markup; a specific vocabulary of structured data, maintained through Schema.org, used to label webpage content in a format search engines and AI systems universally recognize. The most common technical
Structured data; a standardized format for labeling information on a webpage, like product prices, reviews, or article authors, so search engines and AI systems can read and interpret it more
GEO, or generative engine optimization; the practice of optimizing content so it gets referenced, summarized, or cited by generative AI systems, a term often used interchangeably with answer engine optimization.
Copilot; Microsoft’s AI assistant, built into Windows, Microsoft 365, Bing, and Edge, used for drafting content, answering questions, and automating tasks within everyday work applications. Distinguished by its deep integration
Gemini; Google’s AI chatbot and assistant, integrated across Google Search, Workspace, and Android, offering conversational answers, content generation, and multimodal capabilities like image and document understanding. Google’s primary AI assistant
